"Diamonds On the Soles of Her Shoes" by Paul Simon

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A song from college or early adulthood. - Graceland is on my all time top 10 list and this is one of my favorite songs from the album. Imagine how shocked i was to find out just this year that Paul Simon basically just ripped this off from Los Lobos. It's a batshit crazy story. Although Paul is a certifiable genius, he was a bit of a jerk in this case. Whatever. It's a great tune!

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I've never read Marie Kondo's book on organizing, the one where she talks about only keeping those things that "spark joy" in you. Furthermore, I've never been to the container store. When it comes to tasks like finding cleaning supplies or, God forbid, first aid stuff, you'd better ask Wonder Woman, because I don't have a clue. I occasionally sort out my collection of cables, keyboards, old mice, and external hard drives, but I'm not anal about that stuff.

I needed to preface this post with that information so that I sound less crazy from here on out. I am, in fact, manageably crazy, and the one activity that I find soothing like no other is collecting and organizing anything with words and language. I either own or have owned a massive collection of comic books, baseball cards, movies, music, and books—the latter three as analog and digital media.

My brother and I started with comics in the early '70s when you could buy the latest Batman or Superman (Action and Detective) comics for fifteen cents. We branched out to both Archie and Richie Rich as well but decided to avoid the Marvel Comic Universe completely. There was no Spider-Man, Incredible Hulk, or Fantastic Four for us. That stuff was modern and gimmicky, and we wanted a collection with historical substance. We had hundreds and hundreds of comics organized by title and date. We regularly begged our folks to take us to the used bookstore some thirty miles from home whenever we had any money. My brother, who just turned 59, still has the damn things. I gave up my share in an extortion scheme he concocted after catching me smoking while we were in middle school.

I collected baseball cards twice, once in middle school and again in my twenties when I had disposable income and there was a sudden glut of companies making cards after decades of it being a single-player market. If I hadn't grown disgusted with the sport because of doping, I'd probably still be buying boxes of cards to this very day. I had some really nice older cards of Hall of Fame players like Jackie Robinson and Mickey Mantle. I kept them all organized by manufacturer, year, team, and player. I owned a specially made tray nearly three feet square that allowed me to sort and organize hundreds of cards at one time. In the end, I gave them away for next to nothing just to get them out of the house, but the person who bought them still has the whole lot.

Like a lot of Gen X kids, I got a ton of records from Columbia House when they'd send a 14-year-old 11 albums for a penny and the promise to buy more in the future. And because I'm Gen X, I got to buy the very same recordings on cassette and on CD; thus, my rationalization to go absolutely nuts when Napster and BitTorrent became popular at the advent of the broadband era. I have nearly 40K songs in my digital collection, and every single one of them is properly named and tagged with the artist, album, track number, and release date. Some recordings, like concerts and bootlegs, are hard to classify, but I still have a system. I have a pretty good idea of almost everything I own. It all eventually gets played.

My latest passion is electronic books, mostly in EPUB format, although I do have several hundred audiobooks too. For years, I dutifully paid Amazon for the rights to read books on my Kindle. As more and more stories came out about how horrible Amazon is to work for, I became less inclined to spend money with them. Then they took the step of preventing people from downloading books they had already purchased. They had the ability to totally remove my access to thousands of dollars' worth of books whenever they felt like it. Fuck that.

I use a couple of sources that allow me to be anonymous while downloading practically any book I want. I still buy books at the bookstore to support some writers, but my complete collections of Raymond Chandler and Robert A. Heinlein aren't making money for their heirs. I have thousands more books than I will ever be able to read, but I keep downloading more. I love having a library that is so big and well-organized that I can suggest something to just about anyone based on their interests. I send books on religion to my sister, who is a pastor, and books on birdwatching to my brother, who is a nature guide. I send my art-loving son books on Jackson Pollock and Renoir and my daughter books on just about anything.

Every book in my collection is labeled with its title, author, publisher, release date, a synopsis, classification tags, and an image of its cover. That makes it easy for me to tell you that I have:

• 111 books about baseball history
• 32 biographies of Bob Dylan
• 135 cookbooks
• 43 books about World War II in Europe
• 24 books about World War II in the Pacific
• 334 books on science
• 1,187 books on science fiction

I read a lot of books, obviously, but I also spend a lot of time reading book reviews and chatting with other bibliophiles about what we've read. And, like I am with music, I know what books I have and what I'm looking for. It's not just mindless hoarding of digital media for its own sake. What fun would that be?

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"Here Comes the Sun" by The Beatles

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What's a song that instantly makes you smile? Here Comes the Sun by The Beatles - One of the many benefits to being a Beatles fan, is that you get this huge catalog of instantly recognizable, iconic songs. I'm so glad I got to live on the same planet s these guys. Hearing the intro to this song is such a treat, nay, a privilege.

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Good Blue Ridge Mountain Morning To You! The first signs of autumn crispness in the mountain air are so welcome after a long hot summer.

Eastern North Carolina is dotted with hundreds of mysterious lakes and ponds known as the Carolina Bays. They are all elliptically shaped and oriented along the same directional axis. Cypress trees like this are common. The water ranges from tannic rich resembling soy sauce to crystal clear.

Today we see these tobacco barns slowly falling apart as we drive through Eastern North Carolina. The day is coming when they will all be gone and another connection to the place we were born will be lost. Good riddance? Probably, but what is part of our past is still part of us.

I heard you like sunflowers

"Don't Do It" by The Band

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What is a song that instantly energizes you? It's gotta be Don't Do It by The Band. Oh man, a bass line from Rick opens the tune, these guys bring in a horn section, then Levon starts singing and I can't sit still. I'm not a Robbie Robertson fan, but I'll give him some grudging respect for the lyrics. IDGAF if this song is over 50 years old. It's got what it takes to bring the boogie!

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This photo captures so many classic elements of the Carolina coast: the fishing pier, the sun rising over the Atlantic, the shrimp trawler that’s been at it all night and the big flock of shore birds. Y’all need to come see us and get some of this goodness! (Ocean Isle Beach, Brunswick County, NC)

"Hungry Heart" by Bruce Springsteen

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Share a song that changed your perspective on music. I was only 10 when Springsteen released Born to Run and although I remember when he was on the cover of Time and Newsweek at the same time, I didn't become a real fan until high school and the release of The River. I've been a fan of his music ever since.My old man hated this song because of the line "I got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack, I took a wrong turn and I never went back". I knew he wasn't singing that line as something to be proud of. I got it. That whole album spoke to me. It still does.

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When I retired in February, one of the first things I did was set up a home lab using the various components that I've been socking away for years. For me, 2025 has been the year that I've left the tech giants in my rearview mirror. To that end, I wanted to experiment with Linux, even though I don't plan to abandon the Mac or iOS as platforms. After a couple of months fooling around with Ubuntu on an old Lenovo ThinkPad, I decided to build a self-hosted server using the same computer and a bevy of external hard drives that I had accumulated.

I solicited advice on Mastodon and ended up going with Unraid, a NAS-based operating system based on Ubuntu. I know someone who has an Unraid server, and that played a part in my decision. Unraid is not free. I spent $49 for a license that allowed me to use six connected hard drives, and after three months, I upgraded the license so that I can use an unlimited amount of hard drives. Shortly after that, I ditched the old ThinkPad in favor of a new mini PC with USB 3.2 and a faster CPU. It was $150 for a machine with 16GB of RAM, a 512 GB HD, dual ethernet ports, 2 HDMI ports (although I run it headless) and four USB 3.2 ports. I oped to immediately replace the hard drive with a 2 TB model. Much to my surprise, the computer had space and a connection for a 2.5 inch SATA drive, so I threw in a 1 TB model I had laying around in there.

My external storage consists of three 8 TB drives (all purchased since I started self-hosting), a 1 TB and 4TB SSDs, a 3 TB drive left over from the days when I took a thousand shots a day on my DSLR and a lonely old 2 TB external drive that lived most of it's life as a Time Machine drive. My future plans involved larger drives, housed in four drive bays with USB 3.2 connectivity. I've become an expert in finding good deals on hard drives.

I didn't have to buy a new domain name for my server. I just use subdomains from one I already won. Cloudflare takes care of all the networking and routing under their generous free program. I set up a tunnel to my server and now adding access to a new self hosted dervice takes about two minutes to make live.

Another free service that's proven invaluable is Tailscale, which allows you to create a private mesh network, assigning an IP address to your devices in a way so that even your hundreds of miles away, you can still make connections and use resources as if your two devices were sitting on the same desk.

My Services

Immich - Since I removed my photos from Apple, Google and Amazon, I needed a way to share them with my family over the Internet. I also needed a system that my wife and I could use together. Immich is a powerful photo management solution with excellent facial recognition and object identification when searching and it all lives on your computer. I have back up copies of my photos on a cloud server from a European company. Koofr. Immich has iOS and Mac app, although the latter only works on Apple silicon.

Audiobookshelf - Although I am no longer contributing to the enrichment of Jeff Bezos, I do want to have access to the audiobooks I purchased from Audible. I used the free app, Libation to liberate my library. It downloads all your books and removes the DRM that prevents you from with Amazon's hand in your pocket. Now I have a self hosted audiobook library, complete with metadata where I can stream of download books. If I want to gives access to antone else, it's easy to create an account to give them access too. There are various iOS apps compatible with Audiobookshelf.

Calibre-Web - Although you can no longer download the books you've purchased for your Kindle, if you have copies you saved befor April, 2025, you can strip the DRM from them tooand make your whole library available to you from any Internet connected reading device from your own server, wherever you are. You can use the Mac or iOS version of Calibre, or you can import books into the Mac and iOS program.

Plex - If you've obtained movies and TV shows from various sources (no judgement zone), you can create a media server on your computer than you can access from your SmartTV, streaming device, iPad or computer. You don't even have to be at home. If you want to give access to those resources to other people, you can do that as well. Plex works best when you buy the $40 a year Plex pass.Oh, and Plex also can display your photos and give you access to your music collection. If you still have all those ripped CDs and the spoils of the Napster days, you can ditch Apple Music and Spotify.

Copyparty - Although i still use (European based) cloud storgae, it serves primarily as an offsite backup. My day to day work is done on files that live on my self hosted server. Copyparty is an app that runs on my server and is accessible through any browser or file manager you can think of. It handle uploads and downloads, plays music and displays videos to boot.

The ARR Stack - For those sailing the high seas to obtain their media, there are self hosted apps like Radarr, Sonarr, Prowlarr, Huntarr and many more. The ARR stack automatically searches for titles you want, downloads them, adds metadata, subtitles and trailers and makes them available in Plex or Jellyfin. I'm so tired of contributing the the enrichment of billionaires, that after a more than 20-year absence, I have unashamedly returned to the seas myself. Arghhh!!

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I love taking bug pictures with my macro lens. Close up, all bugs look like aliens determined to take over the world!

"Say It Loud - I'm Black And I'm Proud, Pt. 1" by James Brown

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Share a song that captures the feeling of being proud. - I'm going back to the James Brown well for the second time this week. To me, the song that immediately sprang to my mind was "Say it Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud," and one of my favorite movie scenes ever. It was in the movie Conrack about the year that author Pat Conroy spent teaching at an all black school on Yamacraw Island, South Carolina. In the movie, Conroy (played by Jon Voight before he went MAGA) leads his pupils in a run down the beach, all of them singing "Say it Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud,".

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If Donald Trump ever shows up at my favorite coffee shop, we’ve created a special chair, just for him (Photo by me, on an iPhone.)

Good morning from Lake Mattamuskeet, located on the inner coast of North Carolina’s Albemarle Sound. It is 50,000 acres but you could walk across it, since it never gets any deeper than four feet. It’s one of the best winter birdwatching sites in the world with thousands of migratory species congregating here on their way further south. We crewed for an ultra-marathon held her annually. #ultrarunning

"California Stars" by Billy Bragg & Wilco

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What's a song you'd want to hear while stargazing?

California Stars by Billy Bragg and Wilco

When Woody Guthrie's surviving children picked Billy Bragg and Wilco to interpret and record songs that Woody wrote but never performed, they made the perfect choice. The two Mermaid Avenue albums are among my most treasured. They embody Woody's artistry, his restless spirit and his genius..

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Just some random mushrooms I saw at the Western North Carolina Nature Center

"I Drink" by Mary Gauthier

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What song makes you want to forgive someone? - It's almost impossible to explain the compulsion to drink that active alcoholism causes. It's pathological, not logical. Presented with a mile-long list of reasons not to, an alcoholic who isn't in recovery will always choose the bottle. This song by Mary Gauthier includes the line "Birds fly, fish swim, I drink" which perfectly captures the nature of a real drunk. It's been nearly 17 years since I had my last drink, but there are plenty of stark reminders not to judge those still trapped in addiction.

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The Blue Ridge Parkway is a national treasure, with views like this every couple of miles or so. I’ve ridden my bike on it, driven it many times and hiked along it’s entirety. This photo was taken on the way to Linville Gorge, NC.

Today’s anniversary pic. Our thruhike of the #AppalachianTrail was only halfway done when we summitted Mt. Katahdin. We started at Harper’s Ferry, WV. We returned there a couple of days after this and started our southbound journey to Georgia, another 100 plus miles.

"I Got You (I Feel Good)" by James Brown & The Famous Flames

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What song makes you want to dance alone in your room? James Brown had a tough retirement, there is no doubt. For many years though, he was the epitome of energy and hustle. He was unapolgetically Black and Proud and man, what a creative force. It's tough for me to dance these days, arthritis and other old man shit has me all janked up, but hearing the horns of The Famous Flames and James unmistakable voice gives me the chills and wee bit of energy.

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The distictive twin steeples of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Fayetteville, NC against a bright summer sky.

"The Ballad of the Green Berets" by SSgt. Barry Sadler

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What's a song you associate with your hometown? Although my hometown was founded in the pre-colonial era and has a rich history, we are know for one thing, and that is our close ties to the American war machine, specifically the Special Forces command and the 82nd Airborne Infantry Division. Kids around here grow up to the sound of artillery and the sight of paratroopers falling from the sky. I saw a big jump last week over Sainte-Mère-Eglise drop zone. Barry Sadler was an active duty Green Beret when he recorded this song in the 1960s. He lived in the same neighborhood as my high school girlfriend, about one mile from the Ft. Bragg gate.

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One of the iconic experiences of the #AppalachianTrail is the canoe ferry across the Kennebec River. There’s even a white blaze painted on the side. Back in the day you had to ford it but the construction of a dam upstream ended that. Sudden releases of water cause the river level to increase two to four feet within minutes. No thanks. #hiking

I’ve got fond memories of the a hard day in southern Maine on the #AppalachianTrail. It’s the anniversary of our last day in the Bigelow Mountains. It took is 9 hours to go 10 miles. We camped in Stafford Notch, as we were too tired to push on to the next shelter, These were the last 4K-footers before Katahdin. #hiking

I was so glad that we were able to climb Blad Pate Mountain on a dry day, having heard horror stories of how treacherous it could be on a wet day. I love hiking southern Maine, despite the rugged conditions. It’s one of the most beautiful places in America. #Hiking #AppalachianTrail

Paddling on a lake my grandfather helped to construct while in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) during the depression. The state has a fish hatchery and a fishing school for kids there. Hopefully MAGA won’t defund it after all these years.

Those of us whose online life began with 2400 bps modems or slower remember what life was like when viewing an image online meant downloading it line by line over a 10- or 15-minute period. One image. The early editions of CompuServe, Prodigy, and AOL were all text-based, as were local BBSs. When the real Internet, the kind you access through a browser, or rather through Netscape 1.0, became available, for me in 1996, most of us had 14.4 modems; we quickly upgraded to 28.8 and then 56.6 bps. When things were still super slow, I remember downloading Netscape 2.0 like it was the birth of another child. It was about 6 MB in size, and it took 45 minutes of "NOBODY CAN USE THE PHONE." I paced back and forth outside on my lawn, smoking cigarettes and trying to imagine what the new web would look like. Eventually, web pages became slightly more graphical, but video, usually watched on something called RealPlayer, was still out of the question for all but the most patient or porn-hungry.

We got broadband at work before I had it at home. I'd just moved from the factory floor at a Westinghouse Electric factory to the front office to start a new position as a technical writer with a new Pentium computer, a $5,000 color printer, Corel Draw, and a Kodak digital camera that took photos on a small floppy disk. I also had access to a ZIP drive which featured removable media in the form of 100 MB disks. I bought one for home too so I could take files back and forth. Not business files, but stuff I could download at lightning speed at work.

In 1999, I was one of the first people on the beta installation of broadband in my community, having signed up two years prior on the waiting list. As a reward for waiting, I got my first six months free. At this point, I became the biggest outlaw I have ever been in my life. I lived an existence of pure piracy. Napster was just getting started, and I was in love with it. I downloaded every single one of Rolling Stone's top 500 albums I didn't already own. Then I made sure I got every one of the top 500 songs too. Then I started on discographies. 42 Fleetwood Mac albums. 39 Van Morrison albums. Johnny Cash had close to 75 albums, and I went after them all. It was glorious, the Wild West, and a time we will never see again.

Eventually, Napster got shut down, and its follow-ups, like Limewire, were virus-laden poor imitations of the real thing. With the advent of BitTorrent, downloading movies became easy, as did getting whole runs of shows like The Sopranos or The Wire. A new edition would come out on Sunday night, and Monday night you could download a copy to watch on your DVD player. People with Netflix DVD subscriptions were keeping entire neighborhoods entertained.

Torrents weren't just for movies either. You could get software on them. Back in those days, I didn't know any developers, and companies like Adobe and Microsoft charged hundreds of dollars for their flagship products. I felt fully justified in getting my pirated copy of Photoshop. It took up a third of my hard drive, and I had no idea how to use it, but I had a copy. There was an infamous program for Mac nerds called Serial Box that contained the registration information for hundreds of apps, many of them by independent developers and small companies. I started to feel a little bit slimy at that point.

Then my ISP started sending me letters informing me that someone in my house was illegally downloading copyrighted material. I ignored the letters because I figured they were bluffing. In fact, they were not bluffing, which I found out one Saturday morning in 2006 when my Internet would not work. When I called tech support to complain, I was told to call back on Monday and ask for the folks in the fraud and abuse department. Oh, shit. This was during the time that the RIAA was suing the grandmothers of teenage downloaders for thousands of dollars. I was terrified all weekend that I was going to lose my house.

When Monday came, and I made the call, the stern-sounding lady on the phone told me to go to my computer and read what was on the screen. It basically said, "If I ever download something illegally again, my Internet will be turned off forever." There was one checkbox, and it just said "OK." I had to check it to get my Internet back. Oh, the movie that got me busted? It was Little Miss Sunshine, I found out later.

That was it for me. I uninstalled all my torrent downloading software and deleted the bookmarks to pirate sites. I got a three-disk-at-the-time Netflix DVD subscription to satisfy my movie habit. I started buying the software I wanted, even if things like Eudora email were close to $50.

These days, with the advent of VPNs and other technological advances, it's easier than ever to continue to pirate stuff. I work with techies who never stopped and who have elaborate NAS systems connected to always-on servers that use keyword-activated torrenting software to collect their ever-growing wish list. Despite the proliferation of malware in pirated software and a much better understanding of what piracy does to small companies and indie devs, people are still downloading "free" copies of $15 apps. Not me.

I can live with the guilt of depriving Bruce Springsteen of a few bucks by not paying for some of his albums. I'm sorry, Boss. I'm long reformed, and I have never given anyone advice on how to live the pirate's life. It's not the kind of consulting I want to do. The Internet isn't the Wild West any longer. It's all e-commerce and taxes and such. For a while though, we sailed the seas.

Addendum - I wrote this in the summer of 2024. In the spring of 2025, I decided to become one of those techies with an always on NAS automatically downloading my wishlist of movies and TV shows. After nearly two decades of subscribing to streaming services, the relentless price increases coupled with record profits and all manners of anti-competitive behavior drove me to it. At this point, I think it's more morally pure to deprive billionaires of income than it is to watch pirated copies of a TV show. I still shy away from software, for security reasons and because I think more of developers than I do of media conglomerates.

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You are surrounded by courageous people. The chances are you probably display and exemplify courage more than you can imagine. Some people associate the word with Marines charging a pillbox at Iwo Jima, but of course that's not always the case. Often it is just regular people living their lives, doing the things they're called to do. You may feel that you don't have a choice in life, but if you're not curled up into the fetal position, lying on the floor, unable to move, you're making choices every day.

It takes a certain kind of courage to live in the twenty-first century. This is true for everyone, even for old white guys like me who've been playing the game on easy mode most of our lives. Women have to summon courage more often than men do because let's face it guys, we just don't have to think about things like sexual assault, do we? People of color have to start summoning their courage every time white people (or cops) show up in a given location. A lot of us thought that our brothers and sisters and non-binary friends in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities were going to be able to live without displaying the bravery they'd been using forever, but we were wrong. Current malevolent forces require them to be braver than ever.

What is there to fear, you ask? Well, it's not the things that the government or Fox News would have you believe. It's not the boogeyman who's going to break into your house or a brown person who's going to take away your job. It's not terrorists or anyone who should cause you to start stocking up on guns and ammunition. The people who give us the most to fear are the people around us who have the most privilege. It's the people who would take away your child's health care so they could afford a bigger boat for their beach house. The cruelty of the majority seemingly has no limits. People who have burned through two or three marriages without having a happy one are the same people who would take away the right for committed same-sex couples to enjoy the legal benefits of marriage.

The opportunities for courage are unique to us as individuals. The most frightening thing I ever confronted was sixteen years ago when I spent my first day without alcohol. I had not done that in years and years, and the prospect of going twenty-four hours without the comfort of a drink absolutely terrified me. Of course, I was also terrified by the prospect of dying a miserable, alcoholic death. So I decided to try one more time to get sober, and it finally worked.

Other opportunities for courage include starting or ending a relationship, moving to a new town, leaving one job for another, having children, and making large financial decisions. The fact that millions of people do those things every day shouldn't take away from the reality that they require each of us to move forward into the unknown. Courage is infectious, and the best thing that I can do for myself is to participate in communities whenever possible, whether it's a twelve-step organization or just the kind people I know on the internet. Few things have to be endured alone.

Face whatever you have to face today. All of the terrible things that have ever happened to you in your entire life combined haven't killed you, so it's highly unlikely that anything that happens today will kill you either. Remember that you are not alone and that community is available if you look for it.

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"Peaceful Easy Feeling" by Eagles

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Share a song that sounds like your ideal Sunday morning. If there was a soundtrack for me life, a couple of Eagles songs would certainly be on it. They've been background music for 50 years. Some classic rock songs wear out eventually and you never want to hear them again, but others just become part of you.

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There is a plaque on Mt. Washington to the hikers who have died there and at the bottom there are blank spaces for future names to be added. It snows there 12 months out of the year and the summit has recored winds of over 200mph. Today’s the anniversary of the day we summitted. The winds were a mere 60mph for us. #Hiking #AppalachianTrail

"Back In Black" by AC/DC

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What's your favorite song to listen to while doing chores? I will go to my grave insisting that the best chore album of all time is Back in Black by AC/DC - played really loud. After all these years, I know every second of every song. Listening to it while cleaning house is an old, old ritual.

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Today is the anniversary of what I remember as the hardest day of hiking that we spent on the #AppalachianTrail. It was our second day in the White Mountains of New Hampshire and we climbed three 4K foot peaks, Wolf, South Kinsman and North Kinsman. It took 12.5 hours to go 16 miles. The ridge in the ditsnace in this picture is Fanconia Ridge, which we traversed the next day. #hiking

"Little Boxes" by Pete Seeger

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Share a song that sounds like your favorite childhood memory. - One of the albums that got played a lot in our house "for the kids" was the wonderfully subversive tune, "Little Boxes" written by Malvina Reynolds and made famouse by the inimitable Pete Seeger who put the song on Billboard's Hot 100. It's a song about the banal evils of conformity, following the rules and not making any waves. It's had a lasting effect on my view of the world and I'm exteremly happy that it's still getting played in the 21st century.

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I’m not ashamed to say this is the mountain (Mt. Moosilauke) that made me cry on the Appalachian Trail. It was intimidating, a 1,000 feet higher than anything we’d previously climbed and the first time we’d gone above treeline and gotten a 360 degree view. When we reached the top, I got emotional over how lucky I was to be on the adventure of a lifetime with the woman I love.

Wonder Woman ran to the top of a mountaihn on a hot day in Pisgah National Forest (NC), north of Linville Gorge to snap this (pretty damn glorious) sunset picture. We’re spending all of our vacation money thiss ummer in the area hit by Hurricane Helene and abandoned by the MAGAts.

The last two months have been a ride on a very slow moving roller coaster. Living with health challenges has taken an adjustment no one asked if I was ready to make. Thankfully, I'm a quick study and I'm finding out what my current capabilities allow me to do. I'm sleeping like a baby, meaning that I can't make it through the night and I need frequent naps. I'm usually fine as long as I am still. Moving around too much takes my breath away and man oh man, am I slow. One of my grandson uses a wheelchair most of the time but he can get out of it and beat me in a foot race right now.

Forty years of living with bi-polar disorder has taught me a thing or two about mood and energy swings. I accept that they happen and when they do, I don't freak out or whine about it. I had a long, long stretch of productive time from January 2024 through this spring when I managed to write 20 or more blog posts every week, Right now I am only writing one or two a week, but as things stabilize, I hope to pick up the pace a bit. I have managed to stay active on Mastodon, mostly because interacting with the people I have come to know there energizes me.

I’ve developed true compassion for anyone who goes through health challenges alone. I count my blessings every day because Wonder Woman supports me in every way, especially emotionally. She acknowledges my concerns but doesn’t let me wallow in them. She’s kept me incredibly busy by planning multiple trips out of town, mostly to do things with our grandchildren. I’m writing this while we are traveling home from a weekend with three teenage boys spent in SW Virginia, one of the most beautiful places on earth. I might not be able to climb mountains right now, but I still enjoy being surrounded by them.

I really appreciate the many emails and messages I’ve gotten. Don’t ever forget that there are many kind and caring people in the world. The slice of the Internet where I hang out lacks the toxicity that many folks experience when they venture into corporate owned spaces. Give me the small web in every way. I don’t miss billionaire-owned privacy invasion machines.

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On this day on our #AppalachianTrail journey, we hiked 20 miles before 4pm. We emerged from the woods to this quaint New England community where we met a former hiker who fed us and put us up for the night before sending us on way north into New Hampshire the next day. She was an amazing lady who had hiked the entiirety of the trail 3x, starting in the 50s.

It may be trite, but each day truly is a new beginning.

It took us a little less than five weeks to hike south from the WV/VA state line to the VA/TN line - 550 miles of Appalachian Trail goodness. We saw 12 bears, had to hunt for water way too many times and finally got back to places where you can get grits with your breakfast. The last sectiom of the trail in VA is a nice day hike if you’re ever in the area.

In the south, the #AppalachianTrail has lots of switchbacks and long, long gradual climbs out of gaps. In New England, you get stuff like this Vermont scene - straight up mountains on bare granite. On the steeper climbs, all the tree bark is worn off whereever hikers can grab for support. #hiking

This building with its art deco facade, built in 1934, was once a Chevrolet dealership. It’s now used a garage by the city, which thankfully has maintained the design. (Fayetteville, NC)

When troubleshooting system issues or thoroughly evaluating a piece of software, experienced and knowledgable Mac users often turn to activity monitor to get information on memory, CPU usage, power consumption and more. It's often helpful but at times it can be cryptic. The developer of Process Spy has an example. "I was juggling several Java apps, each using a different JDK version — and I couldn’t tell which process was which in Activity Monitor. All I saw was “java”. No version, no path, no details. So I built ProcessSpy — a developer-focused tool that shows full command-line info, version details, environment variables, and more."

ProcessSpy has quite a few free features and even more in the inexpensive ($6.99) paid version.

Features of ProcessSpy

• Advanced tree view -  can show cumulative totals for CPU, Memory and Threads.
• Javascript filters - create complex filters with multiple conditions.
• Version information - shows the version information of the process right in the main table.
• Context menu actions - Show in Finder, copy path, search process online and more
• Advanced process info (paid) - view advanced information like entitlements, Info.plist, and bundle ID and more
• Environmental variables (paid) - view environment variables of the process.

ProcessSpy iis distributed as a signed app in a DMG or through Homebrew. It runs on Intel and Apple Silicon Macs using macOS 14 or higher. In the free version, there is a 10-second wait screen before the program loads. Buying a license gets rid of that and offers extra functionality as described above.

You can purchase a license for ProcessSpy on Gumroad.

To install with Homebrew

brew install --cask processspy

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When troubleshooting system issues or thoroughly evaluating a piece of software, experienced and knowledgable Mac users often turn to activity monitor to get information on memory, CPU usage, power consumption and more. It's often helpful but at times it can be cryptic. The developer of Process Spy has an example. "I was juggling several Java apps, each using a different JDK version — and I couldn’t tell which process was which in Activity Monitor. All I saw was “java”. No version, no path, no details. So I built ProcessSpy — a developer-focused tool that shows full command-line info, version details, environment variables, and more."

ProcessSpy has quite a few free features and even more in the inexpensive ($6.99) paid version.

Features of ProcessSpy

• Advanced tree view -  can show cumulative totals for CPU, Memory and Threads.
• Javascript filters - create complex filters with multiple conditions.
• Version information - shows the version information of the process right in the main table.
• Context menu actions - Show in Finder, copy path, search process online and more
• Advanced process info (paid) - view advanced information like entitlements, Info.plist, and bundle ID and more
• Environmental variables (paid) - view environment variables of the process.

ProcessSpy iis distributed as a signed app in a DMG or through Homebrew. It runs on Intel and Apple Silicon Macs using macOS 14 or higher. In the free version, there is a 10-second wait screen before the program loads. Buying a license gets rid of that and offers extra functionality as described above.

You can purchase a license for ProcessSpy on Gumroad.

To install with Homebrew

brew install --cask processspy

✉️ Reply by email

Hanging out on the deck, taking pictures of the visitors. These freeloaders are looking for the inevitable handouts I use to bribe them into posing for me.

On this date on our Appalachian Trail thruhike, our friend Smokey surprised us by carrying hotdogs and buns in his pack over several mountains to share at day’s end. He also carried a Gatorade bottle full of bourbon. And some weed. I opted for a hot dog, not the party supplies.

I have an "always on" Mac on my desk with several external drives connected to it, drives I need frequently, but not continuously. I'd been putting up with a cluttered Finder and needless spin-ups for months when I discovered MountMate this week. MountMate is a menu bar app that mounts and unmounts external drives. Without MountMate, after a drive is ejected, I'd have to go into Disk Utility to mount it back, or more likely I'd just unplug and replug the drive, not a small task on a desk with three computers and eight external drives. Some people use shell scripts and other fancy methods to accomplish this, but that's a notch above my comfort level.

With MountMate, those days are over. When I need to add or access files on one of my drives, I can do so with just a couple of clicks. MountMate has a lot going for it. It's a native app, not electron, and it has no dependencies. It doesn't require Internet access or root permissions and it doesn't access your files. It even has a bonus feature - reporting used/free space.

The developer, Homielab, is very responsive. The original release of MountMate didn't have Intel support, and he added it in just a couple of days when I requested it. He's also working on a solution that will display the authentication prompt in MountMate when encrypted drives (e.g., Time Machine) are mounted.

MountMate can be downloaded from the HomieLabs website or GitHub. It's free/donationware.

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I have an "always on" Mac on my desk with several external drives connected to it, drives I need frequently, but not continuously. I'd been putting up with a cluttered Finder and needless spin-ups for months when I discovered MountMate this week. MountMate is a menu bar app that mounts and unmounts external drives. Without MountMate, after a drive is ejected, I'd have to go into Disk Utility to mount it back, or more likely I'd just unplug and replug the drive, not a small task on a desk with three computers and eight external drives. Some people use shell scripts and other fancy methods to accomplish this, but that's a notch above my comfort level.

With MountMate, those days are over. When I need to add or access files on one of my drives, I can do so with just a couple of clicks. MountMate has a lot going for it. It's a native app, not electron, and it has no dependencies. It doesn't require Internet access or root permissions and it doesn't access your files. It even has a bonus feature - reporting used/free space.

The developer, Homielab, is very responsive. The original release of MountMate didn't have Intel support, and he added it in just a couple of days when I requested it. He's also working on a solution that will display the authentication prompt in MountMate when encrypted drives (e.g., Time Machine) are mounted.

MountMate can be downloaded from the HomieLabs website or GitHub. It's free/donationware.

✉️ Reply by email

We reached the summit of Stratton Mountain to be greeted by the first moose either of us had ever seen. They’re huge BTW. Wonder Woman pursued the thing for several minutes trying to get a good photo. I was way too tired for all that, so I just rested. Side note: It was standing on this spot that Benton McKaye conceived the idea of the Appalachian Trail.

On our second day in #Vermont, a sudden hailstorm caught us and all we could do was hike through it. Felt kinda badass TBH #Hiking #AppalachianTrail

One of the oldest sections of the #AppalachianTrail is the Vermont section that overlaps that states’s long trail, which was first blazed over 120 years ago. It is one of the most beautiful sections, muddy perhaps, with more bugs than many might like, but still a memorable part of the experience. #hiking

MacMenuBar.com is the best place on the Internet to find apps with that particular interface. Its recently added section is always worth checking out for new free, freemium and paid apps. Here are five recently added apps that are worth checking out.

Always on Top

Always on Top lets you choose any window on your Mac to pin above all other windows. It's got a nice menu-driven interface and is a nice addition to your multi-tasking routine. (Free)

Signal Shifter

Signal Shifter gives you a convenient location to control the inputs, outputs, Bluetooth devices and volume control right from your Menu Bar. (Free)

QuickGif

QuickGif provides a searchable Gif menu for use in any app. Drop GIFs into Slack, iMessage, Discord, and more. Save your favorites. (freemuim)

AppLockr

Applockr allows you to password protect any app on your Mac to prevent it being opened by anyone who should not access it. it's better suited for apps like Apple Notes that have an internal database rather than apps that create separately accessible documents. You should also lock Terminal and Activity Monitor to prevent unauthorized users from using those apps to force quit AppLockr itself. (one time payment)

Calendr

Calendr provides quick calendar access from your menu bar, complete with reminders. it has 1600 stars on Github, so plenty of people find it useful.

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MacMenuBar.com is the best place on the Internet to find apps with that particular interface. Its recently added section is always worth checking out for new free, freemium and paid apps. Here are five recently added apps that are worth checking out.

Always on Top

Always on Top lets you choose any window on your Mac to pin above all other windows. It's got a nice menu-driven interface and is a nice addition to your multi-tasking routine. (Free)

Signal Shifter

Signal Shifter gives you a convenient location to control the inputs, outputs, Bluetooth devices and volume control right from your Menu Bar. (Free)

QuickGif

QuickGif provides a searchable Gif menu for use in any app. Drop GIFs into Slack, iMessage, Discord, and more. Save your favorites. (freemuim)

AppLockr

Applockr allows you to password protect any app on your Mac to prevent it being opened by anyone who should not access it. it's better suited for apps like Apple Notes that have an internal database rather than apps that create separately accessible documents. You should also lock Terminal and Activity Monitor to prevent unauthorized users from using those apps to force quit AppLockr itself. (one time payment)

Calendr

Calendr provides quick calendar access from your menu bar, complete with reminders. it has 1600 stars on Github, so plenty of people find it useful.

✉️ Reply by email

My Greylock is the tallest mountain in Massachusetts, coming in at 3491 feet. There is a restaurant at the top and a kind stranger had given us money to buy a meal there, but alas, it was closed when we arrived. No worries thoguh, we just hiked to the next town and ate there instead.

During a one hour period today, my computer contacted 63 different Apple domains while i was not logged on and using it.

I have been trying to minimize to the extent possible the reach of big tech into my life. A full 25% of the DNS queries from one of my computers (M2 MBA with macOS 15.4) are to Apple owned domains - even though my DNS provider (NextDNS) blocks Apple's native telemetry. Additionally, since I do not use Apple for my mail, contacts, calendars, podcasts or news, I already have the routes to those Apple services blacklisted.

Interestingly, my 2019 Intel MBP with the same DNS settings has less than 3% of it's DNS queries hitting Apple domains.

Here are the domains Apple contacted during one 60-Minute Period When I Was Not Using My Computer

One Hour - 63 Apple Domains

• 1-courier.push.apple.com - Apple Push Notification Service
• 1-courier.sandbox.push.apple.com - Apple Push Notification Service
• api.apple-cloudkit.com - CloudKit, Apple's backend service for developers to store and sync app data
• api.apple-cloudkit.fe2.apple-dns.net - DNS/gateway services for Apple's infrastructure
• app-site-association.cdn-apple.com - Used for Universal Links
• apple-relay.cloudflare.com
• apple.com - Core Apple websites
• bag.itunes.apple.com - iTunes/App Store purchase container
• configuration.apple.com - for fetching various system configurations, including location services
• configuration.ls.apple.com - for fetching various system configurations, including location services
• cts.cdn-apple.com - CDN for network content
• entitlements.itunes.apple.com - Checks your entitlements for apps and content
• fbs.smoot.apple.com - for crash reports, analytics, or user feedback.
• fpinit.itunes.apple.com - Initialization for iTunes/App Store services
• gateway.fe2.apple-dns.net - DNS/gateway services for Apple's infrastructure
• gdmf.apple.com - Device Management Framework
• gsa.apple.com - Apple ID (IDMS) and Game Center Services (GSAS)
• gsa.idms-apple.com.akadns.net - Apple ID (IDMS) and Game Center Services (GSAS)
• gsas.apple.com - Apple ID (IDMS) and Game Center Services (GSAS)
• gsas.idms-apple.com.akadns.net - Apple ID (IDMS) and Game Center Services (GSAS)
• gspe1-ssl.ls.apple.com - related to Location Services (LS) and certificate validation (SSL)
• gspe35-ssl.ls.apple.com - related to Location Services (LS) and certificate validation (SSL)
• iadsdk.apple.com - Apple's iAd advertising network SDK
• init-p01md.apple.com
• init.ess.apple.com - Apple's Entitlement Services
• init.itunes.apple.com - Initialization for iTunes/App Store services
• kt-prod.ess.apple.com - Apple's Entitlement Services
• lcdn-registration.apple.com - related to Software Update and (CDN) registration
• musicstatus.itunes.apple.com - For checking the status of Apple Music or iTunes Match
• ocsp2.apple.com - Online Certificate Status Protocol
• p44-buy-lb.itunes-apple.com.akadns.net - related to the iTunes Store and App Store purchase
• p44-buy.itunes.apple.com - related to the iTunes Store and App Store purchase
• pancake.apple.com - telemetry
• pd.itunes.apple.com - related to the iTunes Store and App Store purchase
• proxy.safeBrowse.apple - for Apple's Safari Fraudulent Website Warning (Safe Browse)
• sandbox.itunes-apple.com.akadns.net - used by developers for testing in-app purchases
• sandbox.itunes.apple.com - used by developers for testing in-app purchases
• sas-uw2-pcms.apple.com - related to purchase or content management systems within Apple's retail or media ecosystem.
• sas.pcms.apple.com - related to purchase or content management systems within Apple's retail or media ecosystem.
• setup.fe2.apple-dns.net - DNS/gateway services for Apple's infrastructure
• st11p01su-lcdnreg.isu.apple.com.akadns.net - related to Software Update and (CDN) registration
• suconfig.apple.com - related to Software Update and (CDN) registration
• swallow-apple-com.v.aaplimg.com - related to content delivery or image services
• swallow.apple.com - related to content delivery or image services
• testflight.apple.com - for TestFlight, Apple's platform for beta testing apps
• time.apple.com - Network Time Protocol
• token.safeBrowse.apple - for Apple's Safari Fraudulent Website Warning (Safe Browse)
• us-ne-courier-4.push-apple.com.akadns.net - Apple Push Notification Service
• us-sandbox-courier-4.push-apple.com.akadns.net - Apple Push Notification Service
• use1-wps-prod.apple.com
• weatherkit.apple.com
• wps.apple.com
• www.apple.com - Core Apple websites
• xp.apple.com - telemetry
• gateway.icloud.com
• p177-content.icloud.com
• edge-062.usatl5.icloud-content.com
• p104-content.icloud.com
• setup.icloud.com
• p150-content.icloud.com
• p176-content.icloud.com
• p101-content.icloud.com
• mask-api.icloud.com

Apple Domains I Already Block

• apple.news
• apple.tv
• podcasts.apple.com
• siri.apple.com
• caldav.icloud.com
• contacts.icloud.com
• mask.apple-dns.net
• mask-api.icloud.com
• doh.dns.apple.com.v.aaplimg.com
• doh.dns.apple.com
• apple-relay.cloudflare.com
• mask-canary.icloud.com
• mask-h2.icloud.com
• mask.icloud.com
• p120-caldav.icloud.com

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During a one hour period today, my computer contacted 63 different Apple domains while i was not logged on and using it.

I have been trying to minimize to the extent possible the reach of big tech into my life. A full 25% of the DNS queries from one of my computers (M2 MBA with macOS 15.4) are to Apple owned domains - even though my DNS provider (NextDNS) blocks Apple's native telemetry. Additionally, since I do not use Apple for my mail, contacts, calendars, podcasts or news, I already have the routes to those Apple services blacklisted.

Interestingly, my 2019 Intel MBP with the same DNS settings has less than 3% of it's DNS queries hitting Apple domains.

Here are the domains Apple contacted during one 60-Minute Period When I Was Not Using My Computer

One Hour - 63 Apple Domains

• 1-courier.push.apple.com - Apple Push Notification Service
• 1-courier.sandbox.push.apple.com - Apple Push Notification Service
• api.apple-cloudkit.com - CloudKit, Apple's backend service for developers to store and sync app data
• api.apple-cloudkit.fe2.apple-dns.net - DNS/gateway services for Apple's infrastructure
• app-site-association.cdn-apple.com - Used for Universal Links
• apple-relay.cloudflare.com
• apple.com - Core Apple websites
• bag.itunes.apple.com - iTunes/App Store purchase container
• configuration.apple.com - for fetching various system configurations, including location services
• configuration.ls.apple.com - for fetching various system configurations, including location services
• cts.cdn-apple.com - CDN for network content
• entitlements.itunes.apple.com - Checks your entitlements for apps and content
• fbs.smoot.apple.com - for crash reports, analytics, or user feedback.
• fpinit.itunes.apple.com - Initialization for iTunes/App Store services
• gateway.fe2.apple-dns.net - DNS/gateway services for Apple's infrastructure
• gdmf.apple.com - Device Management Framework
• gsa.apple.com - Apple ID (IDMS) and Game Center Services (GSAS)
• gsa.idms-apple.com.akadns.net - Apple ID (IDMS) and Game Center Services (GSAS)
• gsas.apple.com - Apple ID (IDMS) and Game Center Services (GSAS)
• gsas.idms-apple.com.akadns.net - Apple ID (IDMS) and Game Center Services (GSAS)
• gspe1-ssl.ls.apple.com - related to Location Services (LS) and certificate validation (SSL)
• gspe35-ssl.ls.apple.com - related to Location Services (LS) and certificate validation (SSL)
• iadsdk.apple.com - Apple's iAd advertising network SDK
• init-p01md.apple.com
• init.ess.apple.com - Apple's Entitlement Services
• init.itunes.apple.com - Initialization for iTunes/App Store services
• kt-prod.ess.apple.com - Apple's Entitlement Services
• lcdn-registration.apple.com - related to Software Update and (CDN) registration
• musicstatus.itunes.apple.com - For checking the status of Apple Music or iTunes Match
• ocsp2.apple.com - Online Certificate Status Protocol
• p44-buy-lb.itunes-apple.com.akadns.net - related to the iTunes Store and App Store purchase
• p44-buy.itunes.apple.com - related to the iTunes Store and App Store purchase
• pancake.apple.com - telemetry
• pd.itunes.apple.com - related to the iTunes Store and App Store purchase
• proxy.safeBrowse.apple - for Apple's Safari Fraudulent Website Warning (Safe Browse)
• sandbox.itunes-apple.com.akadns.net - used by developers for testing in-app purchases
• sandbox.itunes.apple.com - used by developers for testing in-app purchases
• sas-uw2-pcms.apple.com - related to purchase or content management systems within Apple's retail or media ecosystem.
• sas.pcms.apple.com - related to purchase or content management systems within Apple's retail or media ecosystem.
• setup.fe2.apple-dns.net - DNS/gateway services for Apple's infrastructure
• st11p01su-lcdnreg.isu.apple.com.akadns.net - related to Software Update and (CDN) registration
• suconfig.apple.com - related to Software Update and (CDN) registration
• swallow-apple-com.v.aaplimg.com - related to content delivery or image services
• swallow.apple.com - related to content delivery or image services
• testflight.apple.com - for TestFlight, Apple's platform for beta testing apps
• time.apple.com - Network Time Protocol
• token.safeBrowse.apple - for Apple's Safari Fraudulent Website Warning (Safe Browse)
• us-ne-courier-4.push-apple.com.akadns.net - Apple Push Notification Service
• us-sandbox-courier-4.push-apple.com.akadns.net - Apple Push Notification Service
• use1-wps-prod.apple.com
• weatherkit.apple.com
• wps.apple.com
• www.apple.com - Core Apple websites
• xp.apple.com - telemetry
• gateway.icloud.com
• p177-content.icloud.com
• edge-062.usatl5.icloud-content.com
• p104-content.icloud.com
• setup.icloud.com
• p150-content.icloud.com
• p176-content.icloud.com
• p101-content.icloud.com
• mask-api.icloud.com

Apple Domains I Already Block

• apple.news
• apple.tv
• podcasts.apple.com
• siri.apple.com
• caldav.icloud.com
• contacts.icloud.com
• mask.apple-dns.net
• mask-api.icloud.com
• doh.dns.apple.com.v.aaplimg.com
• doh.dns.apple.com
• apple-relay.cloudflare.com
• mask-canary.icloud.com
• mask-h2.icloud.com
• mask.icloud.com
• p120-caldav.icloud.com

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Western Massachusetts is a pretty place. The Berkshires aren’t too daunting but they have their moments. I’d been brainwashed as a southerner to thinnk that the Northeast US was a big urban jungle. It isn’t. New England is one of the prettiest places I’ve ever been. #hiking #Appalachian. Trail

One of the things that make the tools of Big Tech so seductive to use are their rich feature sets. Photo management apps from Google, Amazon, and Apple require little more than flipping a toggle switch to begin uploading photographs from your phone. Each company provides you a ready-made website with the ability to create albums, share photographs, and do basic editing. All you have to do is to give them your data, your privacy, and I suspect your soul.

This year I opted to remove all of my personal photographs from the servers of the big tech companies and to manage them on a self-hosted server in my home. My challenge was to automate the process as much as possible for both me and my wife and to get the same benefits: iOS access, backup and sharing.

The canonical location of our photos is located on the hard drive of an always on Mac which has multiple backups including Time Machine, two different European based cloud storage companies (Koofr and kDrive)and multiple external hard drives. The iOS app of my cloud service, kDrive by Infomaniak automatically uploads all images added to the phones library to their server and those are synced to to the Mac in our home. I created an Apple shortcut that runs once a day when triggered by a Keyboard Maestro macro that copies all of the photos added in the past 24 hours from the upload location to the canonical photo location. Then Hazel moves those photos to a folder corresponding to the current year and month. During this process, images are converted from HEIC to JPG.

I use the powerful and full featured open-source photo management app, Digikam, to rename and tag my photos and to make any adjustments to the geolocation. Digikam also does editing and duplicate detection. I have Syncthing running on the Mac to two other computers. One is my server which uses Unraid. The other computer is a 16-year-old iMac with Xubuntu, a good distro for old hardware, that serves as a 24 inch digital picture frame to rotate our photo collection in a never ending loop. On my server, the synced photo library is used by the photo management application, Immich. I have Immich connected to the Internet through a secure Cloudflare tunnel. It allows us to view our photo collection on the Immich iOS app and to create shareable albums with our friends and family.

Hopefully, if you are interested in removing your photos from the clutches of big tech, this will give you some ideas on how to use some of the software I've reviewed to create your own solution. Feel free to hit me up with questions.

✉️ Reply by email

One of the things that make the tools of Big Tech so seductive to use are their rich feature sets. Photo management apps from Google, Amazon, and Apple require little more than flipping a toggle switch to begin uploading photographs from your phone. Each company provides you a ready-made website with the ability to create albums, share photographs, and do basic editing. All you have to do is to give them your data, your privacy, and I suspect your soul.

This year I opted to remove all of my personal photographs from the servers of the big tech companies and to manage them on a self-hosted server in my home. My challenge was to automate the process as much as possible for both me and my wife and to get the same benefits: iOS access, backup and sharing.

The canonical location of our photos is located on the hard drive of an always on Mac which has multiple backups including Time Machine, two different European based cloud storage companies (Koofr and kDrive)and multiple external hard drives. The iOS app of my cloud service, kDrive by Infomaniak automatically uploads all images added to the phones library to their server and those are synced to to the Mac in our home. I created an Apple shortcut that runs once a day when triggered by a Keyboard Maestro macro that copies all of the photos added in the past 24 hours from the upload location to the canonical photo location. Then Hazel moves those photos to a folder corresponding to the current year and month. During this process, images are converted from HEIC to JPG.

I use the powerful and full featured open-source photo management app, Digikam, to rename and tag my photos and to make any adjustments to the geolocation. Digikam also does editing and duplicate detection. I have Syncthing running on the Mac to two other computers. One is my server which uses Unraid. The other computer is a 16-year-old iMac with Xubuntu, a good distro for old hardware, that serves as a 24 inch digital picture frame to rotate our photo collection in a never ending loop. On my server, the synced photo library is used by the photo management application, Immich. I have Immich connected to the Internet through a secure Cloudflare tunnel. It allows us to view our photo collection on the Immich iOS app and to create shareable albums with our friends and family.

Hopefully, if you are interested in removing your photos from the clutches of big tech, this will give you some ideas on how to use some of the software I've reviewed to create your own solution. Feel free to hit me up with questions.

✉️ Reply by email

"Baba O'Riley" by The Who

Listen on Apple Music

I was a farm kid in the 70s and 80s. When I hear Pete Townshend's guitar play those unmistakable chords and Roger Daltry's voice sing this song, I've felt like I could take on the world. The Who and the Kinks were the more intellectual bands of the British invasion with more and better imagery than some of the pop stuff from the lads from Liverpool and their dirty London Cousins.

*"Out here in the fields, I fight for my meals I get my back into my living I don't need to fight to prove I'm right I don't need to be forgiven

Don't cry, don't raise your eye It's only teenage wasteland"

View Lou Plummer's Crucial Tracks profile

This is Ice Gulch, located on the Appalachian Trail just north of Great Barrington, MA. It’s a mile long and a hundred feet deep. It’s on a stretch of the trail that makes for a good day hike if you are ever in the area.

That brook is the state line for Connecticut and Massachusetts on the Appalachian Trail. There was supposed to be a bridge there, but oh well. If there is one thing I leaned on that hike, it was how to be resilient.

Wonder Woman gliding through a mountain meadow on a warm June morning. She makes it look easy. #ultrarunning

"Jackson (with June Carter Cash)" by Johnny Cash with June Carter Cash

Listen on Apple Music

What song would you use to describe your current relationship? Jackson by Johnny Cashand June Carter Cash - Before I met my wife, I lived a life with too much of a whole bunch of stuff that's not good for you. Most people would consider me reformed today. I love the good natured way Johnny and June sing this tune, knowing Johnny's rough life prior to their marriage.

View Lou Plummer's Crucial Tracks profile

On a day trip to the town of Whittier, Alaska, Winder Woman and I went to see the glacier at Portage Lake. I wanted to see one before they all melt because of climate change.

The Virgina Creeper Trail crosses the soth Fork of the Holston River, just north of Abindon, VA.

We’re heading back to this slice of heaven next weekend so Wonder Woman can volunteer at the Dam Yeti 50, an ultramarathon. It will be our first visit since Hurrican Helene devastated the area. #ultrarunning

I just got into self hosting about a month ago with an old Lenovo Thinkpad I pulled out of the recycling pile at work and a couple of big external hard drives. Tonight I discovered that there is a Docker version of Obsidian that works on my server. In a couple of hours, I had an https connection to a test vault, accessible over the Internet via a URL through a CloudFlare Zero Trust tunnel (which is a free service that does secure routing for you). You can password protect the vault to keep out intruders. You should also use a cryptic subdomain and not obsidian.mydomain.com

All the people who want to use Obsidian at work but are prohibited from installing anything could surely find use in this. Additionally, folks with one of those big ass iPad Pros can now use the desktop version of Obsidian and the plugins that don't work on iOS. Any time you don't have access to your own device, you can jump on anything with a web connection to access your data.

This is probably old news to old school self hosters, but to this neophyte, it was a cool-as-hell discovery.

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I just got into self hosting about a month ago with an old Lenovo Thinkpad I pulled out of the recycling pile at work and a couple of big external hard drives. Tonight I discovered that there is a Docker version of Obsidian that works on my server. In a couple of hours, I had an https connection to a test vault, accessible over the Internet via a URL through a CloudFlare Zero Trust tunnel (which is a free service that does secure routing for you). You can password protect the vault to keep out intruders. You should also use a cryptic subdomain and not obsidian.mydomain.com

All the people who want to use Obsidian at work but are prohibited from installing anything could surely find use in this. Additionally, folks with one of those big ass iPad Pros can now use the desktop version of Obsidian and the plugins that don't work on iOS. Any time you don't have access to your own device, you can jump on anything with a web connection to access your data.

This is probably old news to old school self hosters, but to this neophyte, it was a cool-as-hell discovery.

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Black bear, Moose, Tree Swallow #bird (all in one morning!)

One of my favorite spots in the world, Whitetop Mountain, VA. The day we first hiked hiked there, we met a group of self described “old hippies” having a picnic. They invited us to join in. Back in the late 30’s, this was the site of a music festival featuring the Carter family among others.

This is what you will see from Potter Wildlife Viewing Center just outside of Anchorage. It’s a great place to go if you are into birding.

Anyone who tells you that Macs don't get viruses is misinformed, and you shouldn't rely on that person for computing advice. Mac malware exists. Having said that, the average Mac user is in much better shape than the average Windows user because the bad actors of the world tend to concentrate on the platform with the largest market share. Additionally, those who have a modern Mac running an up-to-date OS have built-in behind the scenes protection that requires them to very little to be safe. If that's you, and you get all your software from the App Store, move along and have a nice day. But, if you download software from developer web sites, Github or if you are living the Pirate's life (you gangster, you), it's probably a good idea to take the extra step to protect yourself. 

The Objective-See Foundation is a non-profit 501©(3) corporation that has been around since 2015. It provides free, open-source security software for the Mac platform. 

BlockBlock 

 BlockBlock is a utility that loads at login and monitors your Mac for the installation of any persistent program, a category that includes most malware. When BlockBlock encounters a new persistent installation, it alerts you and asks for your input. Do you want to allow this or forbid it? "If the process and the persisted item is trusted, simply click 'Allow'. If not, click 'Block'. Both actions will create a rule to remember your selection (unless you selected the 'temporarily' checkbox). If you decide to block an item, BlockBlock will remove the item from the file system, blocking the persistence." 

KnockKnock 

 KnockKnock serves as an on-demand file scanning utility. "Press the 'Start Scan' button to instruct KnockKnock to scan known locations where persistent software or malware may be installed. By design, KnockKnock simply lists persistently installed software. Although by default signed-Apple binaries are filtered out, legitimate 3rd-party software will likely be displayed. 

"If the item is an executable binary, KnockKnock automatically queries VirusTotal with a hash of the binary to retrieve any information. While VirusTotal is being queried, this button displays '■ ■ ■'. Once the query is complete, the title of the button is automatically updated with either the detection ratio, or a '?' if the binary is not known to VirusTotal." 

"With the query complete, the button can be clicked to reveal a popup containing VirusTotal-specific information about the file. If the file is unknown, clicking the 'submit?' button will submit the file for analysis. Known files contain a link to the full analysis report and a 'rescan?' button that will rescan the file." 

Other Options

 Objective-See makes other security products including LuLu, an open-source free firewall and ReiKey, which detects keyboard trackers. 

If your primary security concerns center around places you go online vs. the software you install, I would also suggest running a periodic scan with the commercial product, Malwarebytes. It has a free version for manual scans and a paid version for more extensive real-time protection.

For more on security - see this post for information on my personal toolkit.

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Anyone who tells you that Macs don't get viruses is misinformed, and you shouldn't rely on that person for computing advice. Mac malware exists. Having said that, the average Mac user is in much better shape than the average Windows user because the bad actors of the world tend to concentrate on the platform with the largest market share. Additionally, those who have a modern Mac running an up-to-date OS have built-in behind the scenes protection that requires them to very little to be safe. If that's you, and you get all your software from the App Store, move along and have a nice day. But, if you download software from developer web sites, Github or if you are living the Pirate's life (you gangster, you), it's probably a good idea to take the extra step to protect yourself. 

The Objective-See Foundation is a non-profit 501©(3) corporation that has been around since 2015. It provides free, open-source security software for the Mac platform. 

BlockBlock 

 BlockBlock is a utility that loads at login and monitors your Mac for the installation of any persistent program, a category that includes most malware. When BlockBlock encounters a new persistent installation, it alerts you and asks for your input. Do you want to allow this or forbid it? "If the process and the persisted item is trusted, simply click 'Allow'. If not, click 'Block'. Both actions will create a rule to remember your selection (unless you selected the 'temporarily' checkbox). If you decide to block an item, BlockBlock will remove the item from the file system, blocking the persistence." 

KnockKnock 

 KnockKnock serves as an on-demand file scanning utility. "Press the 'Start Scan' button to instruct KnockKnock to scan known locations where persistent software or malware may be installed. By design, KnockKnock simply lists persistently installed software. Although by default signed-Apple binaries are filtered out, legitimate 3rd-party software will likely be displayed. 

"If the item is an executable binary, KnockKnock automatically queries VirusTotal with a hash of the binary to retrieve any information. While VirusTotal is being queried, this button displays '■ ■ ■'. Once the query is complete, the title of the button is automatically updated with either the detection ratio, or a '?' if the binary is not known to VirusTotal." 

"With the query complete, the button can be clicked to reveal a popup containing VirusTotal-specific information about the file. If the file is unknown, clicking the 'submit?' button will submit the file for analysis. Known files contain a link to the full analysis report and a 'rescan?' button that will rescan the file." 

Other Options

 Objective-See makes other security products including LuLu, an open-source free firewall and ReiKey, which detects keyboard trackers. 

If your primary security concerns center around places you go online vs. the software you install, I would also suggest running a periodic scan with the commercial product, Malwarebytes. It has a free version for manual scans and a paid version for more extensive real-time protection.

For more on security - see this post for information on my personal toolkit.

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Since I stopped spending much time on commercial websites and more time exploring the blogs on IndieWeb platforms, I have developed a type and a preference for the kinds of blogs I like. There's plenty to choose from.

I like tech but not too much tech

For better or worse, it takes a fairly technical person to get involved in blogging. A lot of the people I read are developers of some sort or other even if they don't write about that part of their lives that much. I enjoy reading about the relationship people have with the tech in their life and how that has evolved over time. I find it interesting to read about what people are making, although if a blog primarily consists of code blocks and inside baseball talk about the nuances of particular programming languages, I'm probably going to move on. Most people do a pretty good job at striking a balance.

I like smart and smart-ass but not people who think themselves smarter than everyone else

There are a few bloggers who consistently write about how dumb people are and it's a big old turn off. I like smart people. I like people smarter than me (not hard). I even like people with a smart ass sense of humor but I have worked for too long with stereotypical computer support people who think all end users are stupid and I'm so very weary of that attitude. I think it's great to point out the misconceptions of others but it's boorish if that's the main thing someone writes about.

I like people whose political content is about peace, compassion, equality and diversity

In other words, I'm not a fan of, nor will I read very much of what passes as conservative ideology these days. I don't want to live in a bubble but I'm just not going to waste any of my remaining time on this planet engaging with people who don't believe in climate change or the importance of stamping out white supremacy or in allowing people to be as non-traditional as they want to be. Luckily, I haven't run into too much of that in the circles where I run.

I like consistency

If you are the kind of blogger who just spits out content day after day, I'm here to tell you to keep it up! I realize not everybody has that in them and that's OK. With me, you just don't have to worry that you post too much. If you only write a few paragraphs a week, it's harder to get to know you, to develop curiosity about your the things you share. I don't always have the time or the inclination to read 5,000 word missives, but I like knowing what folks are up to.

I like friendly

I'm from the south and have lived here my whole life. Down here we have a sort of innate familiarity. We are apt to ask how your Mama's doing even if we don't know her. I like people who come across with that same sort of vibe, letting pieces of their real lives leak out. I absolutely do not mind hearing about you feeling tired taking your kid to basketball practice or shocking news about your grandma's affair. I like authentic people who don't posture, who are just themselves, struggling like the rest of us to make sense of a confusing world without resorting to barrier building between themselves and their readers.

For about the past five years, it's occurred to me regularly that two things: my advancing age and my neglect of what people call "taking care of yourself" were going to bring about the end of days before I'm ready for them. My dad, only seventeen years my senior, proclaims to be "ready to go," but I am not. Not at all.

What's happened to me isn't unique. I developed painful arthritis in both knees after a lifetime of being physically active. I eventually had both of them replaced in 2020, but I never bounced back from it. The surgeries coincided with a prolonged bout of depression, one of may I've dealt with over the past 40 years. Complicating that even further, I came down with Guillain–Barré syndrome. By the time I recovered, I'd gained weight and had almost no endurance capacity. Walking a mile was about as much as I could do.

Recently, the slightest bit of physical exertion has been leaving me winded. I have been having real problems with fatigue. Last week my feet and lower legs started to swell in a way that hasn't ever happened before. I made a doctor's appointment with some difficulty because it's America in the 21st century. I didn't really want to think too much about what I might hear, but I was prepared for anything. After prescribing some medication and cautioning me against excessive sodium consumption, the doctor quickly diagnosed me with congestive heart failure and referred me to a cardiologist, which is where this story pauses.

I'm not the type of person who obsesses about their health. I'm not going to WebMD to read everything they have on my condition. I'm just going to wait on the cardiologist to tell me what I need to know. I'm shaken up a bit. I just turned 60 in February and though I'd have more time before this kind of stuff started happening. I take some comfort in knowing that my father-in-law was diagnosed with the same thing 20 years ago. My dad has had three heart attacks. They started in his 40s and he took another 15 years to even quit smoking. Hopefully, I'll have that kind of luck.

I'm already grateful for each day. As a recovering alcoholic with 16 years of sobriety, I've already gotten one second lease on life, one that I have taken full advantage of. I count my blessings every day and draw a lot of strength from a loving family and a fulfilling life that allows me to pursue the things that interest me. While this news has knocked me a bit of a loop, I don't see myself falling into a self-pity trap. It is what it is. I would rather not spend time moping when I can be doing something that brings me joy.

Hopefully, whatever treatment plan I get will alleviate the symptoms I've had and give me more energy. I have the motivation to do stuff, just not the capacity I'd like. I'm lucky to have Wonder Woman who is supportive and loving and not full of "I told you so's". There are plenty of people worse off than me. I'm keeping that in mind.

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Both of these photos are from our morning walk within the city limits of Anchorage, where we visited my daughter and grandchildren.

I lost count of the number of ladders the maintainers of the Appalachian Trail have installed in the rockier sections. New York is notorious for sending you over obstacles like this, when often, while at the top, you can look down and see a perfectly useful trail that goes right around the thing you are climbing on. #hiking

If you enjoy roadside planting of wildflowers, thank former first lady, Ladybird Johnson, who conceived and popularized the practice. I’m glad the government spends money on flowers. I’d rather they do that than buy more bombs or tax fewer rich people. The planting is by a rest stop on Interstate 40 in Johnston County, NC.

Some stretches of the Appalachian Trail lack any amenities. There are whole states with no privies and Maine doesn’t have any bridges for creeks and rivers, you have to wade them all. New Jersey, on the other hand, has all the fancy stuff, including this bridge outside Vernon.

Good morning from just off the Blue Ridge Parkway near Blowing Rock, NC. There are miles of paths through the woods near Cone Manor, once the estate of a textile baron, today a park.

Located in High Point State Park in New Jersey, the Rutherford Shelter sports a (non-functional) satellite dish courtesy of some joker who lugged it through the woods to install. The hiker shown (trail name, Smokey) was notorious for the extra pack weight he endured to carry a constantly replenished bottle of bourbon and a considerable amount of cannabis. #hiking

Good morning from Table Top Mountain, near the edge of Linville Gorge, home of some of the toughest #hiking in the Eastern US.

I don't consider myself materialistic. I drive 2005 Toyota Camry. I've lived in the same house for 30 years. I wear one kind of pants and just about all my shirts are the same color. In the past six months I've upgraded all my tech except my Apple Watch, but before that I had an iPhone 11, an Intel MacBook and a five-year old iPad. Having said all that, I am not a minimalist anywhere in my life except in my backpacking setup because carrying heavy shit up and down mountains gets real old real fast.

My current software girlfriend is Obsidian, a note taking app with 2,000+ available plugins. I'm active on Reddit in the sub pertaining to the app where there is an ongoing war between two factions. There is the crowd I'm with who are very much about seeing what they can configure the program to do using scripts and plugins and ingenuity. Then there is the other side who eschew anything more than the vanilla version and accuse the rest of us of not being productive enough because we spend too much time fiddling with things. What? That's where the fun is. It's a note taking app, perhaps the least sexy kind of software this side of scientific calculators. To just install it and start taking notes without trying to automate or quantify things is just weird to me.

The same goes with phones. I buy the biggest amount of storage space I can afford and I do my level best to use it all. I install all the apps and download all the videos, Kindle books, Audible books, PDFs . I think I have six Mastodon clients installed right now and that's OK. It's my phone. I enjoy software evaluation a lot and I manage to have a busy ass phone as well as a wife, a job and good relations with my offspring. I know that a lot of the default apps people are just normies who get zero enjoyment out of seeing what cool things third party apps can do and don't want to spend the money anyway. That's cool. It's just not me.

When I was at the height of my cycling passion, unlike some more well off folks, I only had one bike because those damn things are crazy expensive. But, I had dozens of water bottles, an entire closet of cycling clothes, multiple pumps, bottles of chain lube, extra helmets and so forth until I finally had to dedicate an entire room of the house to my cycling hobby. To be fair, by that point I'd married another cyclist and we put her bike stuff in that room too. Not a minimalist. Like I said.

Other things I probably have too much of include books, coffee cups, clothes that I'm sure will fit again one day and computer cables because I think there is a law that says nerds like me are obligated to have Firewire 400 connectors at the ready in case Apple brings back the standard. I just want to be prepared.

Things you won't find at my house include jewelry, extra watches, a boat, a fancy riding lawn mower dishes I don't eat off of regularly and televisions scattered around everywhere.

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I saw numerous odd things while passing through trail towns on my AT thru-hike. This live bait vending machine was beside a gas station in Delaware Water Gap, PA, right on the river at the New Jersey State line. The people there were very hospitable, and we stayed in a church-run hostel that has free showers and laundry.#hiking

"We Are Family" by Sister Sledge

Listen on Apple Music

What song best matches the energy of today? We Are Family by Sister Sledge - Just to prove I'm not a music snob, I'll readily admit to having a few disco favorites and this is one of them. It captures today's mood because my son, who lives 1,000 miles away, is coming for a visit. Even though Wonder Woman and I weren't married until he was an adult, we're still family and they adore each other, which makes me happy.

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Every spring, I buy thistle seeds to attract the goldfinches to my yard. I think they are one of the loveliest birds around. #birds

Good morning from Carolina Beach, NC. The pelicans are out early looking for breakfast. #birds.

"You Never Even Called Me By My Name (The Perfect Country and Western Song)" by David Allan Coe

Listen on Apple Music

What’s a remix or cover you like more than the original? "You Never Even Called Me By My Name by David Allen Coe" is one of my all-time favorites. While I have it on pretty good authority that Coe is a bit of a rough character, his rendition of Steve Goodman's original is classic. I was lucky enough to hear Hootie and the Blowfish perform this live at a free convert my hometown sponsored. Darius Ruck explained that being from the south, the band like to play the song for souther audiences.

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This is one of many stretches of the Appalachian Trail known as The Knife’s Edge. It’s in eastern Pennsylvania, a day south of the Lehigh Gap. For about a mile, you have to put your hiking poles away and maintain three points of contact to traverse it. #hiking

I remember this day for one spectacular disappointment - we’d planned to visit a privately owned shelter near the trail that had an actual flush toilet instead of a privy, but we couldn’t find it for some reason. I was so sad. We stopped at this primeval looking spot to eat lunch.

"Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts" by Bob Dylan

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What’s a song that grew on you over time? **Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts by Bob Dylan" - It pains me to think this song is 50-years-old now. I was 10 when it was released and to me, it's always been one of the songs of "The New Dylan" which I roughly define as anything not from the 1960s. The music and lyrics to the tune are just a master class in how to win the Nobel Prize. Along with Hurricane, I think this is some of his best work of the 1970s.

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Southern Maine has some of the best hiking in the US. Bald Pate Mountain is fun on a dry day, but if it is raining, take the day off. This is the south side. The northern side is just a steep granite sliding board with the occasional bush to grab. The view from the top is magnificent. #hiking #AppalachianTrail

An old church on Maui with the mountains in the background

The cupola atop the Moravian Church in Old Salem Village (which later combined with another nearby community to form the modern city of Winston-Salem, NC).

If you descend to the floor of the Grand Canton, this is what awaits you. Wonder Woman sent me this photo on the day she completed the Rim to Rim challenge. She also remembers it as the day I watched two TV shows without her, something I will never live down, I guess.

This is the only photo I have ever taken of a hummingbird while perched. #birds

A couple of years back, Wonder Woman made a weekend trip to Arizona to cross this off her bucket list - running the Grand Canyon from rim to rim, which she did the day after taking this photo.

The skyline of Austin, TX, as seen from the botanical garden at Zilker Park.

After a nearly twenty year break from using peer-to-peer technology (torrents) to download movies and TV shows, I have decided that it's more ethically pure in 2025 to once again fly the skull and crossbones than it is to put money in the hands of the fascist billionaires who monopolize the entertainment industry. To be clear, I'm not advocating doing this to software from independent developers. It's the collaborating big tech companies that don't deserve your money any more.

Don't do this without a VPN. Just to show you how easy it is for your ISP or anyone who has your router's IP address to see what you download, you can use I Know What You Download

With minimal effort, using mostly free or freemium software. you can cobble together a secure, integrated system capable of importing my watchlist from Trakt into a an app that will search torrent web sites for the media that you want, download it and add it to a Plex media server.

The tools needed for creating this system are:

• Trakt - an online database of movies and television shows (Freemium)
• Nord VPN - a privacy protecting virtual private network to shield my Internet traffic from my ISP and others. Other VPNs using the OpenVPN or Wireguard standard with P2P capabilities can also be used. (paid)
• Prowlarr - an app that facilitates public and private torrent sites and adds them to other apps from the same developer to search for media (FOSS)
• Radarr - imports my movie watchlist from Trakt, searched the Internet for movies in English, that are at least 1080p and that do not exceed 10GB . It adds those movies to my BitTorrent client. It renames them using the Plex naming standard and adds them to the folder where my media library is located. (FOSS)
• Sonarr- imports my television watchlist from Trakt, searched the Internet for shows in English, that are at least 1080p and that do not exceed 10GB . It adds those movies to my BitTorrent client. It renames them using the Plex naming standard and adds them to the folder where my media library is located. (FOSS)
• Deluge - a BitTorrent download client with built in VPN integration and a highly configurable interface (FOSS)
• Plex - a media server that lets you watch movies and TV shows stored on your computers hard drive on your television through your Apple TV, Roku, Amazon Firestick or other streaming mechanisms

Jeff Bezos owns Amazon Prime Video, The Washington Post , and a hobby space exploration company among many other things. When the de facto head of Saudi Arabia's government ordered the murder of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, Bezos protested loudly and had a PR photo taken at the man's grave. Yesterday, Bezos proudly announced a new business partnership with the same government that committed the murder.

Apple has been in active collaboration with MAGA since the CEO, Tom Cook, donated $1 million to the president's inauguration. The company was just found to have committed perjury and ignoring a court order to end abusive business practices that unfairly rob developers of revenue and inflate the price of software and services.

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After a nearly twenty year break from using peer-to-peer technology (torrents) to download movies and TV shows, I have decided that it's more ethically pure in 2025 to once again fly the skull and crossbones than it is to put money in the hands of the fascist billionaires who monopolize the entertainment industry. To be clear, I'm not advocating doing this to software from independent developers. It's the collaborating big tech companies that don't deserve your money any more.

Don't do this without a VPN. Just to show you how easy it is for your ISP or anyone who has your router's IP address to see what you download, you can use I Know What You Download

With minimal effort, using mostly free or freemium software. you can cobble together a secure, integrated system capable of importing my watchlist from Trakt into a an app that will search torrent web sites for the media that you want, download it and add it to a Plex media server.

The tools needed for creating this system are:

• Trakt - an online database of movies and television shows (Freemium)
• Nord VPN - a privacy protecting virtual private network to shield my Internet traffic from my ISP and others. Other VPNs using the OpenVPN or Wireguard standard with P2P capabilities can also be used. (paid)
• Prowlarr - an app that facilitates public and private torrent sites and adds them to other apps from the same developer to search for media (FOSS)
• Radarr - imports my movie watchlist from Trakt, searched the Internet for movies in English, that are at least 1080p and that do not exceed 10GB . It adds those movies to my BitTorrent client. It renames them using the Plex naming standard and adds them to the folder where my media library is located. (FOSS)
• Sonarr- imports my television watchlist from Trakt, searched the Internet for shows in English, that are at least 1080p and that do not exceed 10GB . It adds those movies to my BitTorrent client. It renames them using the Plex naming standard and adds them to the folder where my media library is located. (FOSS)
• Deluge - a BitTorrent download client with built in VPN integration and a highly configurable interface (FOSS)
• Plex - a media server that lets you watch movies and TV shows stored on your computers hard drive on your television through your Apple TV, Roku, Amazon Firestick or other streaming mechanisms

Jeff Bezos owns Amazon Prime Video, The Washington Post , and a hobby space exploration company among many other things. When the de facto head of Saudi Arabia's government ordered the murder of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, Bezos protested loudly and had a PR photo taken at the man's grave. Yesterday, Bezos proudly announced a new business partnership with the same government that committed the murder.

Apple has been in active collaboration with MAGA since the CEO, Tom Cook, donated $1 million to the president's inauguration. The company was just found to have committed perjury and ignoring a court order to end abusive business practices that unfairly rob developers of revenue and inflate the price of software and services.

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Having lived in the same house for 30 years now, I’ve watched generations of tree rats make their home in my backyard. Every year, a new crop of babies starts the process of getting to know us through the bribery process. I’ve probably distributed a ton of peanuts to them since 1995.

A spring afternoon in a kayak on a waterway like this is not a bad place to be. In the South Carolina Low Country, you can find places like this all over.

If you ever heard Andy and Barney talking about Mount Pilot on the Andy Griffith Show, that was a reference to the real place, Pilot Mountain, NC, which is about 20 minutes away from Mount Airy, Griffith’s real hometown and the basis for the fictional Mayberry from the show.

I've just taken the longest break from writing in well over a year. It wasn't a planned break. We've been traveling quite a bit over the past month. Preparing for and recovering from the trips takes time, not to mention actually being away from home. I've also been consumed with a couple of interesting projects that can be real time sucks. It's been nice to give myself a break. No one creates pressure for me the pressure I put on myself. The minute a hobby starts to feel like work, it's time to reevaluate.

I operate well when I'm consistent. I'm capable of long, long streaks in all kinds of circumstances. I went nearly two years of getting 10K steps a day, which required me to go for long walks in the midst of a couple of hurricanes. So, yeah, I'm not always the brightest when it comes to these arbitrary goals. Consistency in writing caused me to literally lose sleep on the days when I put off posting until late in the day. Tapping out blog posts on road trips with Wonder Woman doesn't make me the best traveling companion either. I decided to evaluate my dopamine addiction, the one that's fed every time I hit the "publish" button on my blog. Writing is stil a priority, but I'm giving myself some space for other things.

One of the projects I'm working on is the consolidation of a lifetime of photographs. I started using a digital camera in 1995 when I worked for Westinghouse as a technical writer. It was a hefty model made by Kodak that used a small disk to record images. I think it cost about $5K at the time. The company paid for it, but I would occasionally use it to take personal photos. I've been using an iPhone since 2009, which is when the production of digital photography really accelerated. I'm sorting my pictures by the year and month they were taken. When possible, I add geotags to any images that don't have one. Using face recognition software, I'm tagging all the photos of my friends and family. In as many cases as I can, I'm also tagging the photos by subject.

I'm removing all the residue from work, which means random images of IP addresses, error messages, blinking lights from switches, routers, and wireless access points and the like. I'm also moving the thousands of memes I've collected to a separate library to that all my anti-Republican vitriol doesn't get mixed up with the images of my grandkids when i set my computers to play slide shows.

My second project is the self-hosted server I've been working on. I've repurposed old hard drives and other pieces of hardware to create versions of my music, photos, books and video collections from the Internet and on my home network on various devices. Every day I try new ways to avoid using the resources of the big tech companies, a big goal of mine this year.

The only other issue I'm facing is a wacky disturbance in my sleep schedule. It's been months since I got eight continuous hours of shut-eye. I've gotten into a pattern of getting up around 2:00 AM every day to work on my projects and then napping throughout the rest of the day. It's not a productive pattern, but I'm having a hard time breaking it.

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"Jesus Christ" by Woody Guthrie

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What’s a lyric that resonates deeply with you and why? I'm far from religious, but I pay attention to the effect that religion plays on society. Although the utter hypocrisy of the Christian right-wingers seems like a fairly recent development, it really isn't. Woody Guthrie was singing about the dividing line between God and mammon 85 years ago. This song was written in New York City Of a rich man, preacher, and slave If Jesus was to preach what He preached in Galilee, They would lay poor Jesus in His grave.

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This is the lowest point on the Appalachian Trail. It’s in New York, where the trail crosses the Hudson River. Manhattan is only 18 miles away. You can see the skyline from the top of the nearby mountain. #hiking #AppalachianTrail

"Authority Song" by John Cougar Mellencamp

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If your life were a movie, what would its theme song be? Authority Song by John Cougar Mellencamp - I swear, if there is a truer lyric than "I fight authority. Authority always wins>", I don't know what it is. IDGAF, though. I'm going to keep doing me, until I die. I have never been able to play the emperor has no clothes game. I value honesty and transparency in a world that prefers to keep secrets as a power play and to pretend that certain truths don't exist. I'm good-natured, but outspoken. I don't expect to totally change the culture, but I strive to make my mark.

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A very ambitious fellow choosing a peanut the size of his head #bird

A view from the Knockagh Monument

Photo from the Appalachian Trail, Southern Pennsylvania

These ghostly towers are all that remains of the old coal plant for the RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company’s old coal-fired power plant. Today the area is a beautiful urban park and concert venue.

Just a typical roadside scene in Washington County, Virginia.

Today, after many years of being a devout user of Apple's online services, going all the way back to the days of .Mac, I took steps to reduce the company's access to my data in as many ways as possible.

If I told you that Apple gives up user data to law enforcement data a higher percentage of the time than Facebook does, would you believe me? What if I told you that Apple turns over user data 90% of the time? That doesn't quite square with the image the company has cultivated, does it?

Did you know that you can continue to use Apple's default products like contacts, calendars, and reminders without using iCloud at all? You can still enjoy the great design and functionality without putting all your eggs in one basket. If you use every Apple default app with the default settings, and you lose access to that one account, your digital life is just about over. It happens every single day.

Over 40% of the average Internet user's traffic goes to just five big tech companies: Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook (Meta) and Amazon. The leaders of those companies are trying to curry favor with an authoritarian US government. That government is arguing that not all people in the US are entitled to due process. Protecting yourself and your data is more important than it has ever been.

I urge the people I care about to spread their digital life around so that a single compromised account won't ruin their lives. I also urge them to use companies outside the US so that what they have online can't be used against them.

I've written a mega-post about privacy for Mac users with links to the sources of the information about Apple's real privacy record. It's too long and covers too much ground to be appropriate here. For anyone looking for Mac apps that help break GAFAM dominance and reduce dependence on Apple and other companies, here are resources and information to use.

• A Privacy and Security Toolkit AppAddict
• Privacy Badger Extension from the Electronic Freedom Foundation AppAddict
• Pareto Security - Quick and Easy AppAddict
• Opting for Mac Apps That Are Immune to Changes in US Privacy Laws | AppAddict
• Librewolf for Security and Privacy | AppAddict
• Lingon X Finds All the Junk AppAddict
• A Different App for Managing Background Items AppAddict
• Fmail2 for Fastmail AppAddict
• Koofr - European Based Cloud Storage Provider with a Generous Free Tier AppAddict
• Using Kagi Search Engine on a Mac - Software and Tips AppAddict
• How to Internet - 2025 Edition Living Out Loud
• NextDNS for Mac AppAddict
• Mac Firewall Apps AppAddict
  
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Today was the day that I finally went through a comprehensive checklist to cut down my dependency on Apple web services to the fullest extent possible. I'm still a fan of their software and hardware, but despite their PR campaign to pose as a privacy first company, they cooperate with law enforcement a higher percentage of the time than Facebook does. Let that sink in. In a time when our right to due process in America is under question, I'm not letting any US big tech companies have any more access to my life than is absolutely needed. 

All of you who are big fans of using Apple default apps with their default settings, take note. 

The "GAFAM" (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft) are the 5 dominant Internet companies that own many popular services, often operating under a different name, e.g., WhatsApp and Instagram for Facebook. Collectively, about 40% of the average computer and smartphone traffic goes to just these five companies. All of them have been fined by governments around the world for illegal invasion of privacy and other infractions. 

Apple makes headlines occasionally for refusing to cooperate with government demands for access to customer data. According to their own transparency reports, though, the company gives the government what it wants in 90% of cases. 

“iCloud content, as it exists in the customer’s account” can be handed over to law enforcement in response to a search warrant, Apple’s law enforcement guidelines read. That includes everything from detailed logs of the time, date and recipient of emails sent in the previous 25 days, to “stored photos, documents, contacts, calendars, bookmarks, Safari browsing history, maps search history, messages and iOS device backups.” The device backup on its own may include “photos and videos in the camera roll, device settings, app data, iMessage, business chat, SMS, and MMS [multimedia messaging service] messages and voicemail”, according to Apple.

I only recently arrived at the conclusion that I no longer wanted to store things like my calendars, contacts, and reminders with Apple. For one thing, it's always a bad idea to have too much data tied into a single account. People lose access to the iCloud and Google accounts all the time. Spend some time on Reddit or do a quick Internet search for examples. Many people don't fully understand that you do not have to store your contacts, calendars, and reminders in iCloud to be able to use those apps on your Mac and Phone. I've blocked all three services at the DNS level and am happily accessing my data from third-party providers that aren't in GAFAM.
 

Reducing Your Apple Connections

You can take the following steps to cut down on the traffic between your computer and Apple.

• Go through your security and privacy settings with a fine tooth comb and remove access from everything you are not using regularly.
   
  • Location services
  • Contacts, Calendars, Reminders, Photos, etc
  • Analytics & Improvements: (turn them all off
  • Screen recording camera and microphone access
  • Full disk access

• Go through everything with iCloud access
   
  • I had over with 100 apps with access to iCloud Drive. Not anymore.
  • Consider an alternative to iCloud photos
  • Turn off Passwords/Keychain syncing if you use 1Password or another password manager

• Turn off automatic services
   
  • You don't need your computer to ask Apple every day if updates are available. Set that to manual.
  • You don't need the app store to install all those iPhone apps on your Mac. Turn off automatic updates.
  • Go through the apps that are listed beneath your login items and turn off access to anything you don't use regularly or that you don't recognize. Use Lingon or StartupManager to do an even more thorough job.

•  

Since January 20, 2025, I've taken the following steps to leave GOFAM:

• Changed email providers from Gmail to a company located outside the US. I use my own domain for email and have unlimited email addresses. My primary address doesn't get handed out repeatedly to people I would rather not have it.
• Moved the majority of my cloud storage to European providers and removed everything from Google Drive and Google Photos
• Stoped using Google search entirely in favor of Kagi
• Canceled Amazon Prime and stopped backing up photos to Amazon servers
• Uninstalled all Microsoft products and removed all files from OneDrive
• Canceled all Meta accounts and blocked Facebook at the DNS level

Other Privacy Related Practices

• I use NextDNS which allows granular control over Internet traffic. With the right settings, you can stop ads and trackers from passing through your router, speeding up your connection and increasing your privacy. It also provides encrypted DNS to block third parties from having a record of your Internet habits.
• I rotate between five browsers to cut down on fingerprinting. On browsers that support it, I use uBlock Origin, still the Mack Daddy of ad and tracker blockers.
• I use a VPN almost all the time, especially away from home
• I use a third-party firewall to block certain outgoing traffic, since the Mac firewall is only for inbound traffic. You should still turn it on, though.

Related Posts

• A Privacy and Security Toolkit AppAddict
• Privacy Badger Extension from the Electronic Freedom Foundation AppAddict
• Pareto Security - Quick and Easy AppAddict
• Opting for Mac Apps That Are Immune to Changes in US Privacy Laws | AppAddict
• Librewolf for Security and Privacy | AppAddict

✉️ Reply by email

Today was the day that I finally went through a comprehensive checklist to cut down my dependency on Apple web services to the fullest extent possible. I'm still a fan of their software and hardware, but despite their PR campaign to pose as a privacy first company, they cooperate with law enforcement a higher percentage of the time than Facebook does. Let that sink in. In a time when our right to due process in America is under question, I'm not letting any US big tech companies have any more access to my life than is absolutely needed. 

All of you who are big fans of using Apple default apps with their default settings, take note. 

The "GAFAM" (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft) are the 5 dominant Internet companies that own many popular services, often operating under a different name, e.g., WhatsApp and Instagram for Facebook. Collectively, about 40% of the average computer and smartphone traffic goes to just these five companies. All of them have been fined by governments around the world for illegal invasion of privacy and other infractions. 

Apple makes headlines occasionally for refusing to cooperate with government demands for access to customer data. According to their own transparency reports, though, the company gives the government what it wants in 90% of cases. 

“iCloud content, as it exists in the customer’s account” can be handed over to law enforcement in response to a search warrant, Apple’s law enforcement guidelines read. That includes everything from detailed logs of the time, date and recipient of emails sent in the previous 25 days, to “stored photos, documents, contacts, calendars, bookmarks, Safari browsing history, maps search history, messages and iOS device backups.” The device backup on its own may include “photos and videos in the camera roll, device settings, app data, iMessage, business chat, SMS, and MMS [multimedia messaging service] messages and voicemail”, according to Apple.

I only recently arrived at the conclusion that I no longer wanted to store things like my calendars, contacts, and reminders with Apple. For one thing, it's always a bad idea to have too much data tied into a single account. People lose access to the iCloud and Google accounts all the time. Spend some time on Reddit or do a quick Internet search for examples. Many people don't fully understand that you do not have to store your contacts, calendars, and reminders in iCloud to be able to use those apps on your Mac and Phone. I've blocked all three services at the DNS level and am happily accessing my data from third-party providers that aren't in GAFAM.
 

Reducing Your Apple Connections

You can take the following steps to cut down on the traffic between your computer and Apple.

• Go through your security and privacy settings with a fine tooth comb and remove access from everything you are not using regularly.
   
  • Location services
  • Contacts, Calendars, Reminders, Photos, etc
  • Analytics & Improvements: (turn them all off
  • Screen recording camera and microphone access
  • Full disk access

• Go through everything with iCloud access
   
  • I had over with 100 apps with access to iCloud Drive. Not anymore.
  • Consider an alternative to iCloud photos
  • Turn off Passwords/Keychain syncing if you use 1Password or another password manager

• Turn off automatic services
   
  • You don't need your computer to ask Apple every day if updates are available. Set that to manual.
  • You don't need the app store to install all those iPhone apps on your Mac. Turn off automatic updates.
  • Go through the apps that are listed beneath your login items and turn off access to anything you don't use regularly or that you don't recognize. Use Lingon or StartupManager to do an even more thorough job.

•  

Since January 20, 2025, I've taken the following steps to leave GOFAM:

• Changed email providers from Gmail to a company located outside the US. I use my own domain for email and have unlimited email addresses. My primary address doesn't get handed out repeatedly to people I would rather not have it.
• Moved the majority of my cloud storage to European providers and removed everything from Google Drive and Google Photos
• Stoped using Google search entirely in favor of Kagi
• Canceled Amazon Prime and stopped backing up photos to Amazon servers
• Uninstalled all Microsoft products and removed all files from OneDrive
• Canceled all Meta accounts and blocked Facebook at the DNS level

Other Privacy Related Practices

• I use NextDNS which allows granular control over Internet traffic. With the right settings, you can stop ads and trackers from passing through your router, speeding up your connection and increasing your privacy. It also provides encrypted DNS to block third parties from having a record of your Internet habits.
• I rotate between five browsers to cut down on fingerprinting. On browsers that support it, I use uBlock Origin, still the Mack Daddy of ad and tracker blockers.
• I use a VPN almost all the time, especially away from home
• I use a third-party firewall to block certain outgoing traffic, since the Mac firewall is only for inbound traffic. You should still turn it on, though.

Related Posts

• A Privacy and Security Toolkit AppAddict
• Privacy Badger Extension from the Electronic Freedom Foundation AppAddict
• Pareto Security - Quick and Easy AppAddict
• Opting for Mac Apps That Are Immune to Changes in US Privacy Laws | AppAddict
• Librewolf for Security and Privacy | AppAddict

✉️ Reply by email

This beach is almost exactly 100 miles from my front door. It’s on a barrier island with no skyscrapers or chain restaurants. It is lovely.

As a certified, card carrying, paid up member of the resistance, my days are spent with an eye towards doing something, anything to retain my sanity in a world seemingly going mad. I am always on the lookout for whatever I can do to bolster my faith in humanity and to connect with those who feel much the same way about the world as I do.

Here are a few of the things I've done recently.

Reaching Out

In 2010, on my 45th birthday, I went on a long bike ride with a group from my cycling club with a selection of much younger military guys and one civilian woman who was an elite road bike racer. I met my friend AJ that day. A couple of years later, when they got out of the Air Force, they left straight away for Springer Mountain, Georgia to hike the Appalachian Trail. AJ was the first person I'd ever known to start that journey. Years later, when I set out to do the same thing, they provided me advice and even met Wonder Woman and I in Maryland, bought us lunch, took us to the grocery store and offered up a variety of gear to us in case we needed it. Later on , AJ came out as non-binary. I've followed their life for a long time now and seen them complete an education, write and direct plays, complete unbelievable bike rides (like the Tour Divide), get married, parent two boys and joyously become an English professor.

I sent them a letter recently to let them know that I'm still a fan. We used to keep up with one another on Facebook, but since I left, connecting on Bluesky has not been as easy. Unfortunately, AJ's return letter bore the news that their boss at the college was trying to get them fired. The college is in an area that voted MAGA by a 3 to 1 margin, so you can guess why they want o part ways with my friend. It just goes to show that staying connected with the vulnerable people in our lives is something we have to do in times like this. We all need one another.

Speaking Out

If there has ever been a time to be loud and proud, 2025 is that time. I try not to let an opportunity to advocate for resistance pass me by. Just tonight on my App Review blog, I suggested a tool that lets people access information without putting money in the pockets of billionaires and fascists. If you need to see something from the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post or The New York Times, I've got you covered. And, if for some reason, you need to look at something from Twitter, I can show you how to do that without going to the Nazi bar. If I see someone with a Kamal bumper sticker or an anti-MAGA one, I go out of my way to praise them for their sanity.

Staying Informed

I refuse to doom scroll the news on my phone or computer. I haven't watched TV news since before Obama and the only thing I listen to these days is old music and the occasional audiobook. Still, I spend about 30 minutes every morning going through the headlines from the sources I trust. Here's a list. I don't have to wallow in self-pity and frothing anger. I just need to know what kind of damage the Fascists are doing. I take the time to celebrate victories, like the recent decision to stop the GOP from stealing an election here in NC that they lost by 70K votes. I'm also happy to see that the Catholic Church has a Pope who can help stifle the reactionary conservatism of the Americans. Go Leo!

Being Honest

I know that I speak to the current situation from a position of privilege. I'm a cisgender, heterosexual middle class white guy who gets to play the game of life on easy mode. I know this. I keep that in mind. I celebrate the others of my kind who are keeping things as radical as they can, like Adam from OMG.LOL who makes accountability his brand. Another OMG.LOL member @bbq just put up $10K of his dough to match donations to progressive causes and people have stepped up to support The Trevor Project , Prison Literacy, support for the neurodivergent, medical research and more. These role models give me hope for the future.

Resist!

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I've recently been using Safari much more regularly than I have in years. I found quite a few helpful extensions that improve the experience. One that I didn't find on my own, but that I am grateful to have discovered through a tip from a reader, is Redirect Web for Safari, which allows you to define how your computer handles links from certain sources. You can use predefined rules or build your own.

Predefined Rules

• Make Reddit links open in Old Reddit
• Open Twitter links in Xcancel to avoid adding any traffic to the official site
• Open Wikipedia links in Wikiwand for a more pleasant reading experience
• Open Google Map links in Apple Maps if you're trying to de-Google as much as possible
• Since Safari doesn't offer Kagi as a default search engines, you can use this extension to redirect all your searches to Kagi, skipping a trip to Google completely. There are other ways to do this, so if you have something that is already working, stick with it.
• You can also redirect any searched from Google to Brave Search or Startpage
• There are other rules to improve the user experience for Figma, Notion, Facebook, Google Search and multiple tweaks for YouTube

I have long supported ethical journalism sources financially. For years, the New York Times was the most expensive of my subscriptions, including TV, software. I was also a Washington Post subscriber for more than a decade. Last year, after the owners of the publications introduced changes to their editorial policies, I elected to quit supporting them financially. On the occasion that I want to read a story from either of them, I created simple rules that take their URLs and redirects them to the Internet Archive. The same rule works for other paywalled sites owned by billionaires, such as The Wall Street Journal and Bloomburg. You can do the same thing manually and with various other extensions, but this method has less friction than any that I've found. For that reason, it is the one I recommend using.

The extension costs $3.99 for a lifetime use or $1.99 for one year with a seven-day free trial. It has no ads and no tracking. It just makes the Internet better.

✉️ Reply by email

I've recently been using Safari much more regularly than I have in years. I found quite a few helpful extensions that improve the experience. One that I didn't find on my own, but that I am grateful to have discovered through a tip from a reader, is Redirect Web for Safari, which allows you to define how your computer handles links from certain sources. You can use predefined rules or build your own.

Predefined Rules

• Make Reddit links open in Old Reddit
• Open Twitter links in Xcancel to avoid adding any traffic to the official site
• Open Wikipedia links in Wikiwand for a more pleasant reading experience
• Open Google Map links in Apple Maps if you're trying to de-Google as much as possible
• Since Safari doesn't offer Kagi as a default search engines, you can use this extension to redirect all your searches to Kagi, skipping a trip to Google completely. There are other ways to do this, so if you have something that is already working, stick with it.
• You can also redirect any searched from Google to Brave Search or Startpage
• There are other rules to improve the user experience for Figma, Notion, Facebook, Google Search and multiple tweaks for YouTube

I have long supported ethical journalism sources financially. For years, the New York Times was the most expensive of my subscriptions, including TV, software. I was also a Washington Post subscriber for more than a decade. Last year, after the owners of the publications introduced changes to their editorial policies, I elected to quit supporting them financially. On the occasion that I want to read a story from either of them, I created simple rules that take their URLs and redirects them to the Internet Archive. The same rule works for other paywalled sites owned by billionaires, such as The Wall Street Journal and Bloomburg. You can do the same thing manually and with various other extensions, but this method has less friction than any that I've found. For that reason, it is the one I recommend using.

The extension costs $3.99 for a lifetime use or $1.99 for one year with a seven-day free trial. It has no ads and no tracking. It just makes the Internet better.

✉️ Reply by email

"She Thinks I Still Care" by George Jones

Listen on Apple Music

What’s your favorite love song, and why? She Thinks I Still Care by George Jones - anyone who has ever gone through a reluctant breakup or two can relate to most of the lines in this classic tune by George Jones. It has also been recorded by Elvis, James Taylor, Merle Haggard and many others. I love to sing along with this one because It's one of the few songs that fits my voice's ability to harmonize.

View Lou Plummer's Crucial Tracks profile

I’m pretty sure it’s the amount of money riding on this game that attracts the crowd. Taken in a park on the edge of Chinatown in NYC.

I make extensive use of shortcuts all day long on my Mac.  I use them to import data into Obsidian, generate alt-text for images I post on my blog or social media, query Open.AI, dismiss notifications, quit all apps, launch multiple apps at once, perform backups and so much more. In the past, I've made extensive use of the option to add shortcuts to a native menu running from the Mac menu bar, but over time the list grew long and more difficult to mage. 

Just in the nick of time, one of the friendliest and most helpful developers on the planet, Germany's own Carlo Zottman, released a small app called BarCuts. It also runs from the menu bar, but only shows shortcuts that work in the currently active app, plus ones that you decided you always want to have available. 

This means that when I am in Obsidian, I see shortcuts to import a weather report and copy the day's appointments into my daily note. When I use any other app, I don't see those shortcuts. When I am in Safari, I see the shortcut I use to open paywalled site at the Internet Archive. 

I always see the shortcuts for emptying my trash and dismissing all the notifications from the Notification Center. All you have to do to configure your options is to add a single Shortcuts action at the end of your existing shortcuts. 

Because Carlo is good at what he does, "the menu can also be opened by a global keyboard shortcut, you can put your workflows in sub menus, and there's a separate section for all those important always-available workflows. 

Naturally, BarCuts comes with scripting support, and you can also hook it up to Alfred or plug it into Raycast." 

BarCuts has a two-week fully functional free trial. Licenses are €12 personal/€24 business and include updates for one year. You retain ownership and use of the app as long as it is compatible with macOS. There is no subscription. 

For more shortcuts add-ons, see this review. Enhance Apple Shortcuts with These Apps | AppAddict

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I make extensive use of shortcuts all day long on my Mac.  I use them to import data into Obsidian, generate alt-text for images I post on my blog or social media, query Open.AI, dismiss notifications, quit all apps, launch multiple apps at once, perform backups and so much more. In the past, I've made extensive use of the option to add shortcuts to a native menu running from the Mac menu bar, but over time the list grew long and more difficult to mage. 

Just in the nick of time, one of the friendliest and most helpful developers on the planet, Germany's own Carlo Zottman, released a small app called BarCuts. It also runs from the menu bar, but only shows shortcuts that work in the currently active app, plus ones that you decided you always want to have available. 

This means that when I am in Obsidian, I see shortcuts to import a weather report and copy the day's appointments into my daily note. When I use any other app, I don't see those shortcuts. When I am in Safari, I see the shortcut I use to open paywalled site at the Internet Archive. 

I always see the shortcuts for emptying my trash and dismissing all the notifications from the Notification Center. All you have to do to configure your options is to add a single Shortcuts action at the end of your existing shortcuts. 

Because Carlo is good at what he does, "the menu can also be opened by a global keyboard shortcut, you can put your workflows in sub menus, and there's a separate section for all those important always-available workflows. 

Naturally, BarCuts comes with scripting support, and you can also hook it up to Alfred or plug it into Raycast." 

BarCuts has a two-week fully functional free trial. Licenses are €12 personal/€24 business and include updates for one year. You retain ownership and use of the app as long as it is compatible with macOS. There is no subscription. 

For more shortcuts add-ons, see this review. Enhance Apple Shortcuts with These Apps | AppAddict

✉️ Reply by email

My grandchildren started graduating from high school a couple of years ago and now every spring we face the dilemma of what to get them to help in their journey to the rest of their education. Although I don't see anything wrong with cash or gift cards, sometimes it feels good to actually buy a thing, something they might hesitate to get for themselves. Our oldest grandson opted to go the non-traditional route. He's taking classes and then tests to become a certified mechanic. An exceptionably bright lad, he feels the same way his father and I felt about sitting in classes at the age of 19. It's just not going to happen. His sister, on the other hand, is not only going to college (Mary Washington University in Fredericksburg, VA), she's going with a couple of hefty scholarships she worked her butt off to get.

Here are a few ideas for any graduates in your life.

College Must Haves: 30 Things You Need For Surviving - Getting set to pack up and head to college is super exciting. If you’re gearing up to do this, we’ve put together a list of miscellaneous things that’ll make your first year of college much easier: college must haves. Consider getting these items to survive your first years at college!

50 best high school graduation gifts for teens in 2025 - Graduation day is a momentous occasion for students and families, but especially when you’re in high school. The anticipation and work leading up to the commencement ceremony is stressful enough, but celebrating their accomplishments with a practical graduation gift (and perhaps a party!) will be well worth the hassle.

15 Practical High School Graduation Gifts for Your College Bound Kids - Your high school grad started off (and likely ended) their senior year behind a screen, socially distanced and deprived of the excitement of being the top dogs on campus. And with graduation behind them, many are being pushed right into college this fall back at the bottom of the totem pole.

The landscape near the shore is mostly sheep pastures. The waters are teeming with seals.

"Welfare Music" by Hard Working Americans

Listen on Apple Music

What’s a hidden gem or underrated song you love? I don't think I've ever heard any of the Top 10 Most Played songs in my music collection ever played on the radio. My all time #1 most played is Welfare Music, a song I learned to love by listening to The Bottle Rockets but one that has been recorded by several other artists, notably John Hiatt and The Hardworking Americans. The tune has a nice guitar lick and some biting social commentary at the expense of the loathsome Jesse Helms and Rush Limbaugh.

View Lou Plummer's Crucial Tracks profile

Has anyone ever accused you of being judgmental? Did you ever wonder how they arrived at that conclusion without judging you? Tonight, I shall rant about a senseless admonition that no one actually follows. Usually when you get chided for being judgmental, you haven't done anything wrong, apart from stepping on someone's toes.

Typically, when people tell you not to be judgmental, what they mean is be aware that you may not have all the evidence to arrive at an informed opinion on a person's behavior. The most famous example of this is Chekov's story, The Mourner about a woman who fails to control an unruly child on a train trip. Her fellow passengers make the determination that she is a not proper mother until they find out the purpose of her trip is to accompany her husband's casket back home. I am fine with that kind of advice. Get the data you need to make informed decisions.

Making judgments is a survival skill. When we tell our kids not to hang out with hoodlums, we're instructing them to make judgments on other people's character, as we should. One of the most important jobs we have as parents is installing values in our offspring. They will inevitably reach their own conclusions on those values, but at least we get them pointed in the right direction. I'm pleased to say that my son and daughter are firmly anti-racist, and always have been. Both of them have traits I admire and seek to emulate as well. They are good parents. They've made good financial decisions. Not only that, but they work hard.

There are a great many things I will not judge people on:

• The number of tattoos or piercings they have
• The kind of car they drive (unless it is a new, off the lot Tesla)
• The clothes they wear
• The color of their skin
• The use of profane language
• Their sexual preference
• Their gender identity
• Their nationality
• Their job

Things I will judge people on:

• What kind of computer operating system they prefer
• The items in their grocery cart
• Whether they know what to do when they forget their password
• Whether they will use a search engine to find out the answer to a question
• Politics
• Religion (if they belong to one that uses one of the categories above to judge people)
• If they start whispering when they describe another person's race
• How much they tip

The good news is that quite often, the result of me being judgmental is that I find that I admire something about a person. My judgments are usually more positive than negative. It's only in the case of modern MAGA behavior that I will unleash the thunderbolt of eternal damnation on your ass. Anyone who starts making excuses for the Fascists gets assigned to the bad list for all eternity. I'm old. I don't have the time or energy to put questionable people on a rehab program. If you back the fash, you're dead to me. Next, please.

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The rugged Irish coastline in County Cork makes the placid sandy beaches I’m used to, look kind of bland in comparison.

"Convoy" by C.W. McCall

Listen on Apple Music

What's a gulity pleasure song? - Convoy by C.W. McCall - If you were a kid in the 70s, you probably thought this song was cool too. It's a tune about CD radios, a brief national craze during the decade. They were even options on high-end automobiles like Lincoln Continentals and Cadillac El Dorados. There is a certain beat poetry vibe to the lyrics, characterized by the unforgettable line "eleven long-haired friends of Jesus in a chartreuse microbus." I recently heard this played on the Muzak system of a barbecue joint in Salem, VA and my respect for the owners grew in that moment.

View Lou Plummer's Crucial Tracks profile

One of my bad habits was imagining myself to be a super-villain. It took me a long time to realize that I am not a unique and special snowflake. I am a man among men, just your average, garden variety dude, no better (and this is crucial) and no worse than the next guy. it's actually a skill of maturity to be able to realize that it's OK, in a general sense, to tell yourself that everybody fucks up from time to time. Good mental health does not include perfectionism, a certain impediment to actually making progress in this world.

I'm not a trained psychologist, nor am I well versed in therapy talk, but I know a few things about you. You have undoubtably done my some things in your life that you wish you hadn't. That does not define you. Once you honestly acknowledge to yourself the part you played in whatever it was and made an honest attempt to make amends for it, you can move on. In fact, if you don't move on, you're not being fair to yourself or the other people in your life.

One of the most dreaded parts of the 12-Step Recovery process, although ultimately, one of the most freeing, is the process of writing down what the program refers to as a searching and fearless moral inventory. What it really boils down to is actually making a list, with pen and paper, of all the stuff you feel guilty about along with your resentments towards, well, everything and anybody.

Guilt and its brother in arms, shame, are two of the worst impediments to leading a happy and useful life. They are intensely self-centered emotions. Like most things that are self-centered, they are cunning, baffling, and powerful and will lead you right back into self-defeating bad behavior. I don't know about you, but I can't live for long while wallowing in guilt and shame before I start looking for some relief. As an alcoholic, if there is one thing I know to be an unhealthy but sure fire way to squash some feelings out of existence, it's by drowning them in cheap bourbon. Of course, they will still be there to greet me when I sober up, but such is the illogical reality of the disease.

Since drinking stopped being an option for me in 2008, I had to find a healthy way to do two seemingly contradictory things: admit my part in the many, many mistakes I made over the years and let go of the guilt and shame attached to those things. I am a retrospective person by nature. If you've read this blog, you know that a lot of what I write is deeply autobiographical. My memory is weirdly specific. I may not be the best a figuring things out, thus my lack of math skills, but I can remember the hell out of a set of facts. What this means, practically, is that I deeply internalized seemingly every single time someone ever told me that I disappointed them, that I failed to live up to my potential or that I was just an asshole.

Step One was figuring out that not all of that was actually true. Even the people we love have agendas and issues. No one gets to define us to ourselves, but ourselves. I feel no guilt and no shame for my early and steadfast decision not to seek a formal university education. True, this decision may have caused me to earn less than the maximum amount of possible dollars, but so what? I had a great career in a field that I loved, with plenty of time to pursue things more important to me than work.

It is indeed a fact that I have been married four times, but anyone who knows me also knows that I am in a committed and happy relationship with a person I deeply love. Today is our 12th wedding anniversary.

We are the only people who really and truly know if we are committed to self-improvement. I'm a guy who had lots and plenty of opportunities to do better. Alcoholism is an ugly illness that is characterized by self-centered and dishonest behavior. It stops emotional growth and kills the maturity process. It prioritizes one thing above everything else in the world. Putting down the bottle down gave me the chance to do things that drinking robbed me of. I had the chance to be honest, first with myself and then with me family and the world. Lo and behold, did you know that being honest is the key to good mental health? Who knew?

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Before 2025, my self-hosting experience had been limited to running the media server software, Plex, on a 2009 iMac. When I retired that machine, I didn't resurrect Plex on my new Mac, although I did hang on to all the media files. I retired myself this year and resolved to start self-hosting some services as a learning experience. My home network consists of three Mac laptops, a Lenovo ThinkPad, that 2009 iMac I mentioned, plus five iOS devices and an Amazon Kindle Fire (Android). 

I elected to use the ThinkPad as a server, although the platform I chose, Unraid, will also run on a Mac. Many of the services it hosts are fully accessible on Mac and iOS devices. I picked Unraid because I have contacts who use it. It is not FOSS. A license that allows you to connect six hard drives in a RAID array is $49. 

Unraid Benefits

• 1 year of free OS updates 
• All Unraid OS features 
• Perpetual Starter license 
• Access to Community Apps 
• VM and Docker Management 
• Integrated Tailscale + VPN Support 
• Network-Attached Storage Dual Parity Protected Array, ZFS, BTRFS, XFS Pools 

In the two weeks I've been using it, I have installed a media server (Plex), a photo management server (Digikam), file sharing (Syncthing), and the Mac compatible VPN, Tailscale that allows geographically distant devices to interact as if they were on a LAN. 

Other services I plan to investigate are: 

• Nextcloud - a personal alternative to Dropbox, Google Drive, One Drive etc.
• Self-hosted Calibre ebook server
• Paperlessngx - a document management system

In seeking advice from experienced self-hosting folks, I received this detailed answer from a friend on Mastodon, @phillip@omg.lol
 

Unraid

"Unraid is probably the easiest turnkey solution if you have the cash to throw at it. Easy App Store, Docker, VMs, NAS, etc. It stays easy while leaving you tons of headroom to grow. There’s also a huge community with tons of resources and docs behind it. The main con here imo is money. Some have complained about performance issues, but afaik that’s only in larger NAS setups."
 

yunohost

yunohost.org is pretty slick and even has its own App Store to make downloading new apps dead simple. However, it doesn’t use Docker containers (harder to switch to another platform later like Unraid) and seems to prefer opening ports publicly. That not may be a con if you were already planning on doing that anyways.
 

Yacht

For free + docker, I’d recommend a dashboard app like Yacht (or Dockge for even simpler). You’ll need to manually configure your apps, but it’s generally pretty straightforward and a “set it and forget it” kind of thing.

✉️ Reply by email

Before 2025, my self-hosting experience had been limited to running the media server software, Plex, on a 2009 iMac. When I retired that machine, I didn't resurrect Plex on my new Mac, although I did hang on to all the media files. I retired myself this year and resolved to start self-hosting some services as a learning experience. My home network consists of three Mac laptops, a Lenovo ThinkPad, that 2009 iMac I mentioned, plus five iOS devices and an Amazon Kindle Fire (Android). 

I elected to use the ThinkPad as a server, although the platform I chose, Unraid, will also run on a Mac. Many of the services it hosts are fully accessible on Mac and iOS devices. I picked Unraid because I have contacts who use it. It is not FOSS. A license that allows you to connect six hard drives in a RAID array is $49. 

Unraid Benefits

• 1 year of free OS updates 
• All Unraid OS features 
• Perpetual Starter license 
• Access to Community Apps 
• VM and Docker Management 
• Integrated Tailscale + VPN Support 
• Network-Attached Storage Dual Parity Protected Array, ZFS, BTRFS, XFS Pools 

In the two weeks I've been using it, I have installed a media server (Plex), a photo management server (Digikam), file sharing (Syncthing), and the Mac compatible VPN, Tailscale that allows geographically distant devices to interact as if they were on a LAN. 

Other services I plan to investigate are: 

• Nextcloud - a personal alternative to Dropbox, Google Drive, One Drive etc.
• Self-hosted Calibre ebook server
• Paperlessngx - a document management system

In seeking advice from experienced self-hosting folks, I received this detailed answer from a friend on Mastodon, @phillip@omg.lol
 

Unraid

"Unraid is probably the easiest turnkey solution if you have the cash to throw at it. Easy App Store, Docker, VMs, NAS, etc. It stays easy while leaving you tons of headroom to grow. There’s also a huge community with tons of resources and docs behind it. The main con here imo is money. Some have complained about performance issues, but afaik that’s only in larger NAS setups."
 

yunohost

yunohost.org is pretty slick and even has its own App Store to make downloading new apps dead simple. However, it doesn’t use Docker containers (harder to switch to another platform later like Unraid) and seems to prefer opening ports publicly. That not may be a con if you were already planning on doing that anyways.
 

Yacht

For free + docker, I’d recommend a dashboard app like Yacht (or Dockge for even simpler). You’ll need to manually configure your apps, but it’s generally pretty straightforward and a “set it and forget it” kind of thing.

✉️ Reply by email

The land occupied by Central Park is probably worth about a trillion dollars, and it is a testament to good judgment that it continues to exist. It’s truly a national treasure.

Typically, I just can't bring myself to part with the exorbitant amount of cash it takes to go to concerts these days. The thought of shelling out several hundred dollars to see a billionaire make music just doesn't sit well with me, no matter how much I love Paul McCartney or Bruce Springsteen. Then there's the whole "being around other people" thing that can sometimes be problematic if those other people are drunk or rude or both. Moreover, I may be a grumpy old man, so there is that.

Concerts weren't always crazy expensive and my tolerance for other people wasn't always as low as it is now. I don't have a long list of shows to reference. I knew someone who lived in Germany in the late 70s, and she had double fistfuls of tickets to huge festivals and concerts she'd made it to. The list of acts was long and storied Clapton, The Who, Yes, Muddy Waters, Todd Rundgren, Genesis, The Stones. Zeppelin, Iggy Pop.

I never went to any shows while I was in high school, too poor. The first time I saw popular live music was July 4th, 1983 at Ft. Jackson, SC when our drill sergeants marched us dutifully to see The Guess Who performing for the troops. I knew the same two Guess Who songs everyone knows, American Woman and No Sugar Tonight/New Mother Nature.

The next year, someone gave me tickets to see Heart and Eddie Money at the local auditorium. It's main claim to fame is that it's where Elvis's next concert was to be held before he died. I don't remember much about the show. I was there by myself and while I liked both acts, neither of them were among my favorites.

The best show I saw in my 20s was complements of my mother, who gifted my siblings and i tickets to see Paul Simon when he was touring for the album, Rhythm of the Saints, the one that came after Graceland, which is one of my all-time favorites. Paul sand all the old hits, lots of stuff from Graceland and engaged with the audience all night long. He even gave a shout-out to the section where we were sitting in appreciation of our non-stop dancing for the entirety of the show. Somehow we even managed to sway to Bridge Over Troubled Water.

During the following years, I saw two of my favorite acts twice. The first was James Taylor, performing just a few miles down the road from his childhood home in Chapel Hill. It gives me cold chills to hear that man sing "In My Mind, I'm Gone to Carolina" under a crisp, springtime Carolina moon. The other repeat performance was by a man I considered to be a living legend, Doc Watson, master of bluegrass, country, folks, blues and gospel music. Doc was blind from the age of two. Seeing him walk onto the stage, holding on to the arm of his accompanist, Jack Lawrence, was breathtaking. I was so familiar with his voice that when he started to speak to introduce his songs, I felt like I was sitting in my living room listening to an old friend.

A few years after they hit it big, Hootie and the Blowfish put on a free show in the center of the town where I live. We went down extra early to get good seats and ended up less than 50 feet from the stage. People were in a good mood, proud of having such a talented group playing their heart out for the locals. At the end of the show, Darius Rucker said, "We're from the south and when we play in the south, we like to do this song because people appreciate it." Then they launched into the David Allen Coe version of "You Never Even Called Me By My Name." It was glorious.

Some of my other favorite shows include Gillian Welch with David Rawlings at the NC Museum of Art. Before they went there separate ways, I also saw The Carolina Chocolate Drops with Rihiannon Giddens play a free show in Black Mountain, NC.

For the first time in ages, I'm actually going to a concert next weekend in Winston Salem. Wonder Woman bought us tickets to see Old Crow Medicine Show. These fellows might have gotten started way up in Ithaca, New York, but they wrote what is now considered to be the unofficial North Carolina state song., Wagon Wheel, which declares, "If I die in Raleigh, at least I will die free."

Headed down south to the land of the pines
I'm thumbin' my way to North Caroline
Starin' up the road
And pray to God I see headlights
I made it down the coast in seventeen hours
Pickin' me a bouquet of dogwood flowers
And I'm a-hopin' for Raleigh
I can see my baby tonight

Amen.

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iDrive Cloud Backup

From Assaf at Labnotes - IDrive Cloud Backup I started looking into Backblaze alternatives, and so far iDrive is a strong contender. I chose the mini plan, 500GB of backup for $9.95 a year (it’s somewhere in the UI, look it up). It does have continuous backup, but so far I’m happy just running on a schedule. Can’t figure out how to get it to ignore repeat directories like every node_modules, or limit by file type/size (eg don’t backup large videos). And the UI is not pleasant, but neither is Backblaze (their restore is overly complicated), so just trading one deficiency for another. Oh, but they do give you 100GB of space to sync files between your devices.  

Command Keeper

Command Keeper by Ari Feldman - Use Command Keeper (Free) to easily organize and access your command line snippets, shell scripts, and even SQL queries. It's ideal for app developers, web developers, or just anyone who needs to spend time working with command line interfaces. 

• Build a Big Collection: Add or edit up to 999 command snippets (each can be up to 4K in size)
• Save Time: Automatically insert the selected command or query directly into your Terminal. Command Keeper works with your choice of the macOS Terminal or iTerm, Warp, and Ghostty (if installed)
• Always Ready: Runs in the background, so its always available and you can even pin your favorite snippets to always appear first
• Powerful Filtering and Search: Filter your snippets by category and search your snippets by command, description, and even notes contents
• Keyboard Friendly: Use keyboard shortcuts to create snippets and browse through snippets efficiently
• Preserve Your Data: Export your snippets to a CSV or JSON file and backup your snippet database
• Fast and Lightweight: Its simple and minimalist design ensures it’s light on resources
• Wide Compatibility: Works on macOS Ventura, Sonoma, and Sequoia; optimized for Intel and Apple Silicon CPUs

Readeck

Readeck - (Free)a web app that runs as PWA on a Mac with self hosting available this year. It's an open source read it later application

Curate Your World
 

• Archive, mark as favorite, add labels to your content so you can find it later.
• Search anything in your growing content and create dynamic collections. Highlight What Matters
• Highlight the key parts of any text content and come back to it later.
• Browse and find the highlights from all your content. Save Video Transcripts
• Save a video link and Readeck will retrieve the transcript when available.
• Read, export, highlight and search the save transcript as if it were an article. Export to E-Books
• Take an article with you on the ride home or a full collection for a weekend.
• Readeck lets you export articles and collections as a single ebook. It provides a standard catalog on supported e-readers. Adjust to Your Needs
• Read your way; set a different font, text size and line height.
• Readeck lets you do all that and remembers your preferred settings for your next read. Browser Extension
• Save while browsing with the browser extension.
• This includes the content on websites you can access but Readeck can't.

Czkawka

Czkawka - (Free) - An open source app with multiple tools to cut down on accumulated cruft on your Mac.

Multiple tools to use:
 

• Duplicates - Finds duplicates based on file name, size or hash
• Empty Folders - Finds empty folders with the help of an advanced algorithm
• Big Files - Finds the provided number of the biggest files in given location
• Empty Files - Looks for empty files across the drive
• Temporary Files - Finds temporary files
• Similar Images - Finds images which are not exactly the same (different resolution, watermarks)
• Similar Videos - Looks for visually similar videos
• Same Music - Searches for similar music by tags or by reading content and comparing it
• Invalid Symbolic Links - Shows symbolic links which point to non-existent files/directories
• Broken Files - Finds files that are invalid or corrupted
• Bad Extensions - Lists files whose content not match with their extension

Legcord

Legcord - is here to help you hate Discord less. It's a lightweight, free and open-source Discord client.

Highlights

• Uses a new lightweight electron framework
• Built-in game detection tools
• Very hackable for you developer types
• Made for privacy - Legcord automatically blocks all of Discord's trackers; even without any client mods, you can feel safe and secure! They also don't collect any data from you.
• Designed for Mac - Legcord is optimized for macOS, with a native screen sharing and a more Mac-like experience. It's optimized for both Apple Silicon and Intel macs! No more spinning fan when opening Discord.

✉️ Reply by email

iDrive Cloud Backup

From Assaf at Labnotes - IDrive Cloud Backup I started looking into Backblaze alternatives, and so far iDrive is a strong contender. I chose the mini plan, 500GB of backup for $9.95 a year (it’s somewhere in the UI, look it up). It does have continuous backup, but so far I’m happy just running on a schedule. Can’t figure out how to get it to ignore repeat directories like every node_modules, or limit by file type/size (eg don’t backup large videos). And the UI is not pleasant, but neither is Backblaze (their restore is overly complicated), so just trading one deficiency for another. Oh, but they do give you 100GB of space to sync files between your devices.  

Command Keeper

Command Keeper by Ari Feldman - Use Command Keeper (Free) to easily organize and access your command line snippets, shell scripts, and even SQL queries. It's ideal for app developers, web developers, or just anyone who needs to spend time working with command line interfaces. 

• Build a Big Collection: Add or edit up to 999 command snippets (each can be up to 4K in size)
• Save Time: Automatically insert the selected command or query directly into your Terminal. Command Keeper works with your choice of the macOS Terminal or iTerm, Warp, and Ghostty (if installed)
• Always Ready: Runs in the background, so its always available and you can even pin your favorite snippets to always appear first
• Powerful Filtering and Search: Filter your snippets by category and search your snippets by command, description, and even notes contents
• Keyboard Friendly: Use keyboard shortcuts to create snippets and browse through snippets efficiently
• Preserve Your Data: Export your snippets to a CSV or JSON file and backup your snippet database
• Fast and Lightweight: Its simple and minimalist design ensures it’s light on resources
• Wide Compatibility: Works on macOS Ventura, Sonoma, and Sequoia; optimized for Intel and Apple Silicon CPUs

Readeck

Readeck - (Free)a web app that runs as PWA on a Mac with self hosting available this year. It's an open source read it later application

Curate Your World
 

• Archive, mark as favorite, add labels to your content so you can find it later.
• Search anything in your growing content and create dynamic collections. Highlight What Matters
• Highlight the key parts of any text content and come back to it later.
• Browse and find the highlights from all your content. Save Video Transcripts
• Save a video link and Readeck will retrieve the transcript when available.
• Read, export, highlight and search the save transcript as if it were an article. Export to E-Books
• Take an article with you on the ride home or a full collection for a weekend.
• Readeck lets you export articles and collections as a single ebook. It provides a standard catalog on supported e-readers. Adjust to Your Needs
• Read your way; set a different font, text size and line height.
• Readeck lets you do all that and remembers your preferred settings for your next read. Browser Extension
• Save while browsing with the browser extension.
• This includes the content on websites you can access but Readeck can't.

Czkawka

Czkawka - (Free) - An open source app with multiple tools to cut down on accumulated cruft on your Mac.

Multiple tools to use:
 

• Duplicates - Finds duplicates based on file name, size or hash
• Empty Folders - Finds empty folders with the help of an advanced algorithm
• Big Files - Finds the provided number of the biggest files in given location
• Empty Files - Looks for empty files across the drive
• Temporary Files - Finds temporary files
• Similar Images - Finds images which are not exactly the same (different resolution, watermarks)
• Similar Videos - Looks for visually similar videos
• Same Music - Searches for similar music by tags or by reading content and comparing it
• Invalid Symbolic Links - Shows symbolic links which point to non-existent files/directories
• Broken Files - Finds files that are invalid or corrupted
• Bad Extensions - Lists files whose content not match with their extension

Legcord

Legcord - is here to help you hate Discord less. It's a lightweight, free and open-source Discord client.

Highlights

• Uses a new lightweight electron framework
• Built-in game detection tools
• Very hackable for you developer types
• Made for privacy - Legcord automatically blocks all of Discord's trackers; even without any client mods, you can feel safe and secure! They also don't collect any data from you.
• Designed for Mac - Legcord is optimized for macOS, with a native screen sharing and a more Mac-like experience. It's optimized for both Apple Silicon and Intel macs! No more spinning fan when opening Discord.

✉️ Reply by email

The sun sets over the low country

Great big beautiful morning to y’all. The Atlantic Ocean (Wrightville Beach) is just a couple of miles beyond that treeline. I might just have to go take a walk there after breakfast.

I don't think there is any question on how useful the free Mac package manager, Homebrew, can be. You can download and install an app with just one simple terminal command, something like:

brew install bbedit

After it's installed, there is no ZIP archive or DMG file to clean up or manage. To update you apps installed with Homebrew, you don't need a special app or a subscription to anything. You just open a terminal windows and run:

brew upgrade

Your apps will be upgraded in place with nothing for you to clean up. To back up your configuration, you just run

brew bundle dump

and a custom brewfile will be created at the root of your home directory. If you get a new Mac od do a fresh install on your current machine, you can use that brewfile to download all your apps and packages with one command.

If you are late to the party and already have an /Applications folder full of your favorite apps, don't worry, you can use a simple shell script to compare what you have installed with what is available for the Homebrew catalog. It won't take long to replace your manually installed apps with their Homebrew counterparts.

How To Check Your Applications Folder

Here is the script. It isn't 100% foolproof, so read the explanation and don't empty your trash until you've verified that the app you got from Homebrew is the same as the app you replaced.

\# List all applications in /Applications and ~/Applications
find /Applications -maxdepth 1 -type d -name "*.app" -print0 | while IFS= read -r -d $'\0' app_path; do
  app_name=$(basename "$app_path" .app)
  echo "Checking: $app_name"

  \# Sanitize the app name for Homebrew search (replace spaces with hyphens, etc.)
  search_term=$(echo "$app_name" | sed -e 's/ /-/g' -e 's/\./-/g' -e 's/@.*//') \# Basic sanitization, might need more

  \# Search Homebrew formulae
  brew search "$search_term" | grep -i "^$search_term$" && echo "  Found in Homebrew formulae"

  \# Search Homebrew casks
  brew search --cask "$search_term" | grep -i "^$search_term$" && echo "  Found in Homebrew casks"
done

Explanation:

• The script finds all .app directories in /Applications and ~/Applications.
• It extracts the application name.
• It performs basic sanitization of the name to make it more suitable for a Homebrew search.
• It uses brew search and brew search --cask to look for matches in both Homebrew formulae (command-line tools and libraries) and casks (GUI applications).
• The grep -i "^$search_term$" part tries to find exact matches (case-insensitive).

How to use:

1. Save the script to a file (e.g., check_brew_availability.sh).
2. Make it executable: chmod +x check_brew_availability.sh.
3. Run it from your terminal: ./check_brew_availability.sh.

Limitations of this script:

• Naming variations: Homebrew package names might be significantly different from the application bundle names.
• False positives/negatives: The simple name sanitization might lead to incorrect matches or miss potential ones.
• Manual review needed: You'll likely need to manually inspect the output to confirm if the Homebrew package is indeed the same application you have installed.

In case you are wondering, this script and the instructions were written with the help of an LLM coding GPT. I've tested it on several different Intel and Apple Silicon Macs with solid results.

✉️ Reply by email

I don't think there is any question on how useful the free Mac package manager, Homebrew, can be. You can download and install an app with just one simple terminal command, something like:

brew install bbedit

After it's installed, there is no ZIP archive or DMG file to clean up or manage. To update you apps installed with Homebrew, you don't need a special app or a subscription to anything. You just open a terminal windows and run:

brew upgrade

Your apps will be upgraded in place with nothing for you to clean up. To back up your configuration, you just run

brew bundle dump

and a custom brewfile will be created at the root of your home directory. If you get a new Mac od do a fresh install on your current machine, you can use that brewfile to download all your apps and packages with one command.

If you are late to the party and already have an /Applications folder full of your favorite apps, don't worry, you can use a simple shell script to compare what you have installed with what is available for the Homebrew catalog. It won't take long to replace your manually installed apps with their Homebrew counterparts.

How To Check Your Applications Folder

Here is the script. It isn't 100% foolproof, so read the explanation and don't empty your trash until you've verified that the app you got from Homebrew is the same as the app you replaced.

\# List all applications in /Applications and ~/Applications
find /Applications -maxdepth 1 -type d -name "*.app" -print0 | while IFS= read -r -d $'\0' app_path; do
  app_name=$(basename "$app_path" .app)
  echo "Checking: $app_name"

  \# Sanitize the app name for Homebrew search (replace spaces with hyphens, etc.)
  search_term=$(echo "$app_name" | sed -e 's/ /-/g' -e 's/\./-/g' -e 's/@.*//') \# Basic sanitization, might need more

  \# Search Homebrew formulae
  brew search "$search_term" | grep -i "^$search_term$" && echo "  Found in Homebrew formulae"

  \# Search Homebrew casks
  brew search --cask "$search_term" | grep -i "^$search_term$" && echo "  Found in Homebrew casks"
done

Explanation:

• The script finds all .app directories in /Applications and ~/Applications.
• It extracts the application name.
• It performs basic sanitization of the name to make it more suitable for a Homebrew search.
• It uses brew search and brew search --cask to look for matches in both Homebrew formulae (command-line tools and libraries) and casks (GUI applications).
• The grep -i "^$search_term$" part tries to find exact matches (case-insensitive).

How to use:

1. Save the script to a file (e.g., check_brew_availability.sh).
2. Make it executable: chmod +x check_brew_availability.sh.
3. Run it from your terminal: ./check_brew_availability.sh.

Limitations of this script:

• Naming variations: Homebrew package names might be significantly different from the application bundle names.
• False positives/negatives: The simple name sanitization might lead to incorrect matches or miss potential ones.
• Manual review needed: You'll likely need to manually inspect the output to confirm if the Homebrew package is indeed the same application you have installed.

In case you are wondering, this script and the instructions were written with the help of an LLM coding GPT. I've tested it on several different Intel and Apple Silicon Macs with solid results.

✉️ Reply by email

The raccoons who made computer magazine ads great - In the 1980s and 1990s, PC Connection built its brand on a campaign starring folksy small-town critters. They'll still charm your socks off.

LBJ & the Great Society - Ken Burns - LBJ "voted against every civil rights bill during his tenure as congressman, then spearheaded the greatest civil rights measures since Reconstruction".

Why I abandoned Google search after 27 years — and what I’m using instead - Google =  a once dependable search engine that has lately become nearly unrecognizable to anyone who remembers the days of 10 blue links and the motto "don't be evil."

Netigen A Year Without Azeroth - This feels entirely too dramatic, but yesterday marked the one year anniversary of my quitting World of Warcraft—an event that feels both overwrought and consequential.

Best Books of the 21st Century (So Far) | Kirkus Reviews - Warning! If you are a compulsive book buyer, like me, this might get expensive.

Our Freedom is Fragile: Lessons From the Jewish Children Who Fled Nazi Germany ‹ Literary Hub - "America is no longer a country of refuge but one that is preying upon its most vulnerable inhabitants, including children, who stand to suffer the most…"

How Photography From the Vietnam War Changed America - The New York Times This week marked the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. The images in this article are some of the most influential works of photojournalism ever taken.

Enjoyed it? Please upvote 👇

I like to take pictures of cops. It gets them used to it.

Victorian cemeteries are a treasure trove

A view of the sunset from the south end of Manhattan.

I know I'm in a good place mentally if I am willing to take on difficult tasks. There have been depressive stages in my life where the simplest things, like shaving or just taking out the trash have been overwhelming. I can remember standing in front of the sink, just looking at my razor and shaving cream, and being furious that picking them up and putting them to use was so difficult. Thanks to the miracles of modern pharmacology and a lot of lived experienced, I haven't had a prolonged episode of that kind of living in a couple of years. KNOCKING ON WOOD.

When I'm on the upside of my mood cycles, the sky can be the limit of what I'll attempt. In days gone by, the desire to do hard things would often come in the form of physical challenges. They weren't competitions against other people, just attempts to better my own previous records or to keep some activity trend upwards. I like data, so I've always kept records of how far and how fast I've ridden my bike or walked. When I was power lifting, I was constantly trying to break my personal records. If I couldn't do that for a one-rep maximum, then I would try to lift more cumulative weight. I will measure anything and attempt to improve upon it. I've done it with the number of books I've read and the number of words I've written. Setting goals works for me.

Speaking of goals. I know that some people dislike the concept. They say that you should read a book for the joy of the experience, not because you want to put another tally mark on a sheet. The thing is, everyone has goals, whether they write them down and think about them or not. Some people have a goal of watching as much TV as possible and doing as little work as they can. Of course, they'd deny that to be true, but the proof is in the doing. I just find that I tend to do better when I consciously set goals and make plans, then when I drift. I am a poor drifter.

My current voluntary hard thing is setting up self-hosted services on my home server. Since retiring, I set up a Linux laptop and messed with it enough to discover that I enjoyed the process. Swapping out the hard drive and converting it into a server was the next logical step. Despite a longtime interest in tech, I've never gone down the self-hosted rabbit hole before, So I don't have a ton of experience to draw from. I do, however, know smart people on the Internet. Some of them have said, "Please let me know if you need any help." That's an offer that I'm taking seriously, whether they know it or not.

I'm also doing some things in a few of my relationships that take some effort. My Dad and I haven't ever been real close. We've been estranged a few times, although not in the last few years. He's struggling with the reality of aging and the toll it takes on you physically and mentally. The hardest thing for him though is being the caretaker for his wife of 43 years, who has Alzheimer's. He is one of the few people she still recognizes, and my whole family admires how patient and gentle and loving he is with here, even when she gets confused and angry. Dad shared with me how lonely it is to live like that. I resolved to spend more time with him as a result, and now we meet for lunch every week. I love being able to cheer him up over a plate of food. He does his best not to mention touchy subjects, which I appreciate. I do the same for him.

These days, I try to have a routine. Since Wonder Woman is still punching the clock, I'm doing slightly more around the house. I have to-do lists and I cross off tasks as I knock them out. My tech projects and writing take up most of my days, and the evenings are given over to making home cooked dinners and spending time with Wonder Woman. I'm grateful for long stretches of good mental health, always hoping that I've finally beaten the black dog for good. Who knows, maybe I have.

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No matter how cool, trendy, or chic we get, the desire to keep physical contact with the object of our affection never leaves us. #streetphotography

Some of the best moments of my life have been reading books and riding bikes. #cycling

"This Land Is Your Land" by Woody Guthrie

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Which song would you use to introduce yourself to someone new? -- This Land is Your Land by Woodie Guthrie - This is one of those songs that few people have ever heard all the lyrics to. Woody Guthrie was a 100% radical human being, a friend to the working man and an enemy of the bosses. Joe Klein's biography, Woody Guthrie - A Life, is one of the most beautiful books ever written.

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"Highway Patrolman" by Bruce Springsteen

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Share a song that tells a great story. Highway Patrolman by Bruce Springsteen on Nebraska - In just a few minutes, the narrator of this song lays out a tale that would be hard for a director to capture in a two-hour movie. It's about brothers who took different paths in the 1960s. One of them got drafted and went to war, coming home damaged. The other could have played it safe at home, but didn't. He took a job as a cop. On the fateful night the song is about, he gets called out to a crime scene of his brother's making. Instead of arresting him, he just chases him to the Canadian border and watched his tail lights disappear.

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A view of the Spanish countryside from the Camino de Santiago #hiking

This is my contribution to the May IndieWeb Carnival.

Although I used a local BBS and AOL chat rooms back in the day, the first online community I ever found a home in was at [Epinions].(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epinions) It was a dotcom company that paid you to write reviews of commercial goods, including books and albums. You could use HTML to dress up what you wrote, so there was a small but satisfying thrill in learning how to be good at that. As usual, they had an off-topic category too, where you could write about whatever you wanted, and I contributed there all the time. People could follow you and send you private messages. I eventually outgrew it, but I tried to find a guy from there recently, after 28 years, and I succeeded because he's still using the same unique username.

When I had a Geocities website, part of it was dedicated to Vietnam veterans and their kids. I corresponded with quite a few men and women who were eager to have someone to talk to about their experiences. I live near a giant army base, so all the vets I know have comrades-in-arms everywhere they g0. The 18-year-old who got drafted from Iowa in 1967 and did his year in hell didn't always have that, and I was glad to hear them out, publish their stories, and generally just be as supportive as I could.

I was in some great bicycling forums around the turn of the century, one of which still sends me birthday greetings every year. I went as far as Georgia to meet folks from there for an organized ride.

For a few years, believe it or not, I took part in the local newspaper's community forum, which was mostly a cesspool of name-calling and ad hominem attacks on liberals. I'd write outrageously provocative stuff about W. Bush and his wars just to stir up the flag wavers. They doxed me regularly, and the woman I was married to absolutely hated me going on there. After a while, it wasn't fun anymore, so I stopped.

When I hiked the Appalachian Trail, I kept an online journal every single day and posted to a website called Trail Journals. As a result, I had people up and down the East Coast who wrote to us and visited us on the trail. It wasn't unusual to meet trail groupies who knew all kinds of our fellow hikers from reading their journals. More than a decade later, I am still in touch with people I first met through that journal.

Then we enter the long dark winter of the soul—Facebook was all there was. I never really used Twitter for anything besides news, so I didn't find much social about it. My Facebook experience was much the same as many folks. In 2008, it was a place to keep up with friends and family and to reconnect with people from the past. In 2017, I had a viral post that caused me to get literally thousands of friend requests, many of which I accepted for the hell of it. I met plenty of cool people, including a friend I eventually met in Derry, Northern Ireland. I ditched it for good this year after Zuck sucked up to MAGA and fired the fact-checkers.

My experience on the IndieWeb since I joined micro.blog in January 2023 has been my favorite experience out of all of them. In my first 10 months, I' posted more on Mastodon than I did on Twitter in 15 years. I closed my Twitter account soon after joining the Fedi, not wanting to send any traffic to what is essentially the Nazi Bar of the Internet. I am a happy customer of OMG.LOL, Aside from Micro.blog, I also use Scribbles and BearBlog.

There are bloggers who I've come to be exceptionally fond of. Some are just damn good writers, and all are damn good people. Knowing them makes me a better person.

I have an account on Bluesky, but it lacks the community vibe of Mastodon. It's not really decentralized, even though the technology exists for it to act that way. I have to remind myself that it is a billionaire funded corporation and, like all of its ilk, destined for enshitification.

I do love Reddit, where I've had an account for over 19 years, despite its checkered past. Syndicating AppAddict there has driven lots of traffic to my website. Earlier this year, I volunteered to become a moderator of r/macOS, a subreddit with over 300K members. That's been interesting. I get a chance to help out newbies and to stamp out some toxicity, so what it lacks in actual fun, it makes up in satisfaction.

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My brother is moving back to North Carolina. He hasn't lived here for nearly a quarter of a century. It will be good to have him available for doing brotherly type things.

Although I am 20 months older than he is, we were only a year apart in school. He and my Dad share a birthday that's special for another reason. It was the cutoff day to start school. If either of them had been born a few hours later, they would have had to wait another year to begin their education. As it was, they both went through 12 years of always being the youngest person in their class. Both of them are blessed with plenty of smarts, I'll get to that in a minute, so they didn't suffer any developmental issues as a result.

My brother and I had slightly irregular childhoods. Our parents were teenagers when we were born and got divorced just as I started school. I left home at 14, after having already lived a couple of years apart from he and my mom and sister. I left because I needed a fresh start away from a step-father I didn't get along with and a school that asked me not to come back over the issue of a little weed I had in my pocket. My brother left home to attend one of the most prestigious high schools in the US, the North Carolina School of Science in Mathematics. We didn't get to hang out much as teenagers, just a week here and there at holidays or in the summer.

When I graduated, I went into the military. When he graduated, he went to study astrophysics at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland on a scholarship. Unfortunately, being far from home and in cold ass Cleveland wasn't good for his mental health and after a couple of years he came back to North Carolina, where he was accepted to the state’s flagship university in Chapel Hill. He changed his major to English, joined a crazy literary fraternity, made good enough grades to make Phi Beta Kappa and graduated on time. I visited him up there a on occasion, including once on my 22nd birthday where we ingested hallucinogenics and stayed up all night walking around in the snow visiting his friends, who all seemed to be aspiring poets.

He became a technical writer and married a nice woman from Chapel Hill. He eventually decided to go to grad school at the University of Georgia to get a degree in wildlife biology. He completed all the course work and did field research and hit the world's tallest mental block while working on his thesis. He ditched it, ended up getting divorced and moving to California to go to work for the World Bird Population Center. He is a bird expert of some repute to this day. He moved on to other jobs centered around wildlife, met and married a beautiful, smart woman from Marin County, They had a couple of kids. He worked for a good while at the Buck Institute, which studies aging, before heading back to nature related jobs in and around Pt. Reyes National Seashore.

I only managed to make one trip out west to see him in all that time. I actually went out more than that but weirdly enough, I had a trip to San Francisco the same week he had one scheduled to be in NC, so we missed each other. Now, as it happens, he's hit a rough patch in his personal life and he and his college - aged daughter are driving across the country in a few weeks so he can start over again in the east. I want to spend some time with him and do what I can to assuage the personal anguish that this kind of upheaval brings about. Our parents are both in their late 70s now, and I'm glad, as his he, that he will get to spend some quality time with them.

One of the things my brother is excellent at is maintaining relationships. He is still close to the people he went to high school and college with and has made time to go and see them on many of his trip home over the years, Hell, he's still friends with the kid who lived across the street from us when he was in the fourth grade. They used to collect comic books and make up their own superheroes to draw.

Luckily, we have the same outlook on a great many things. We're both non-religious, progressive and inclined toward writing the odd poem now and then. We both love the outdoors. Not only that, but we may end up getting a chance to get to know each other better at this advanced age than we have since junior high school. At least, I hope so.

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Luckily, I don't have a diagnosis of ADHD or dyslexia, although anyone who spends much time online quickly becomes aware that those challenges are common among people of all walks of life, including tech. I'm old, so I lived a good thirty years before widespread Internet access arrived in the 90s. In the olden times, I was a voracious reader of books. Gradually through the years, my ability to concentrate eroded bit by bit until, like most people these days, I rarely even read all the way to the end of news articles unless I really force myself. 

The developer from Applorium LTD contacted me and asked me to take a look at Glide, an app made especially for people with ADHD and dyslexia. The app has five different tools to isolate text on a page. You can choose one of six different colors to partially color the part of the screen that you are not reading. You control the opacity, and you decide how much of the page you want to highlight. You can narrow it down to just a thin line that moves down the page as you read of you can hide everything but what you are reading. It's harder to describe than it is to use. I got the hang of it in less than a minute. 

Everything can be controlled from a menu bar icon or from user-defined hotkeys. There is a well-written guide to get you started, should you need it. It's not long or difficult to understand. 

I've got to say, that using the app to read a detailed article on some complicated Linux related material really helped me concentrate in a way that I didn't expect. It has practically no impact on my computers' performance, so I will have no problem toggling it on whenever I have the need to make the extra effort to retain important info. 

The app is currently $5.99 in the App Store.It appears that the developer is responsive to user input, as he has made numerous updates since first releasing the app. Almost every element in the interface, from color, to opacity to line height can be adjusted. 

Even if you don't feel that you require this app, please suggest it to anyone in your circle with concentration or perception challenges.

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A view inland from Italy’s Amalfi Coast courtesy of my daughter, who is currently traveling there.

There isn't much sacred in my family. By that, I mean that practically anything anyone has ever done at any time in their life, ever, is fair game to bring up and use against them for a laugh. It's never done in a mean-spirited manner. I'm not saying that the butt of the current joke is always happy about it. It's just that they know their day will come. What goes around, comes around. I don't remember consciously making this a requirement that Wonder Woman had to meet before I married her, but she met it anyway. And how. Even my step-daughters who were both adults when I met them are also ruthless teasers of their saintly mother and their own offspring.

Today is our Elizabeth's birthday. In the text I sent her this morning, I related an entry from my journal. Five years ago, I answered a prompt for the daily entry. "Who is the funniest person you know?" My answer was "I’m going to say Elizabeth, followed closely by Jennifer. Lizzie has that understated absurdist sense of humor that I identify with. The time she explained that the older boys thought that Will and Aiden were going to McDonald's EVERY DAY because they found trash in the car ONE TIME is still one of the funniest observations I’ve ever heard a parent make about their kids. It was just her delivery and the believability of what she says."

My oldest daughter is not ashamed of one of her finest legalistic moments, eating cereal from a mixing bowl to get around my "one bowl rule." And my son is still the same sweet person, who once got mad at his sisters when they were children. the meanest thing he could think of to retaliate was to threaten to buy two boxes of Junior Mints and then refuse to share with them because that would sure as hell show them who was boss.

Jennifer, the youngest of all five of our kids, can be pretty scathing when it comes to recalling her Mom's finest moments. Wonder Woman often gets the short end of the stick when it comes to food at endurance events. She has celiacs and can't eat wheat, which rules out peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and pop tarts and other assorted sweets that race organizers offer. Jennifer loves to tell the story of her Mom yelling that she "Didn't want another fucking banana" once at a race having grown sick of that being the only thing she could eat at aid station after aid station.

The kids love to tease me for the times when I failed to rise to the manliness some occasions seem to have required. We had wiener dogs when the kids were in school, miniature ones. We were in front of the house with one of them this particular night when a massive Rottweiler entered the yard and began to menace our pooch. My son was there with me. Instead of dealing with either of the canines, for some reason, the only thing I could think to do was to begin yelling at my teenage boy "Get the dog! Get the dog!" I was frozen in place, unable to move, commanding a kid I outweighed by a hundred pounds to stare down a Rottweiler. It was not my finest moment.

He also mocks my one and only attempt to engage in his hobby of Japanese kendo fighting. It's conducted with bamboo swords. When I was a kid, and we did play sword fighting, we just tapped sticks together , which is what I thought he and I were going to do. When he announced that the bout was on, I was pretty nonchalant, ready to tap sticks. Not him. He took his kendo sword and proceeded to wail on my bare hands about 10 times in as many seconds. It was excruciating. I yelled, threw the sword down and told him that he was a jerk. But the part he likes to bring up was that I then called him a sadist for his joy in causing his old man so much pain. This was after the Rottweiler incident, so he might have just been paying me back for putting his life in danger.

Good opportunities for teasing never die. The first time I went with my wife to Asheville, we crossed the French Broad River going into town. She misread the sign and asked why they named it the French Bread River, and thus it has been named ever since, much to her chagrin. So, I'm warning you all right now. If we ever hang out, don't slip up because I will never let you forget it.

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No matter how consistent you are, your computer is more consistent. One of my hobbies requires me to do frequent file exports, and I've just never come up with a consistent naming scheme to provide me the information I want at a glance. I always have to get info or switch Finder to show details to differentiate between different versions of the files I use. NameQuick, an Ai-driven file naming utility by indy developer Josef Moucachen, is a full-featured app with numerous automation options. 

There isn't a free trial, but there is a three-day period to get a refund, so you can still safely see if the app works for you. You have to enter a registration key to use the app. There are currently two licensing options, $19 for one Mac and $29 for three Macs, and priority tech support. Those are one-time payments and not subscriptions.Both of these options require you to use your API keys from Open AI or Gemini, or you can use Ollama, a local LLM. If you don't have an API key, the link to get one is in the app. 

NameQuick requires accessibility access and asks that you enable notifications. You have the option to turn on full-disk access if you would rather not bother approving various folders one at the time. 

When setting up the app, you can set up watched folders and any new files that are placed in them will be renamed based on their content and any rules you set up. You can specify that only files that begin a certain way get renamed, or that only files with a certain extension. You can have AI extract patterns from your files to include in the name, such as the name of a client or project, the location of a photo shoot or the date. 

You can invoke NameQuick by a user definable hot key or by selecting files in the finder and using the menu bar icon. 

I tested the app on some random photos I recently used in a blog post. I had it rename some PNG files of screenshotted text quotes, and I threw some complicated CSV files at it. I also had it parse out files names from a folder of PDF invoices. Out of 25 files, I only had to manually rename one that, I felt, wasn't adequate. I used both OpenAI and Gemini in my testing. 

I would like to see the developer add integration into the services' menu, since I use that often in my workflows. I am also an automation junkie, so having shortcut support would also be nice. I would like to be able to click on a file or group of files and have "Rename with NameQuick" as an option. The other feature request I have is the ability to include file attributes as variables in the name, such as the file creation date or camera info from EXIF data. 

"NameQuick supports a comprehensive range of file types including • Images: PNG, JPG, JPEG, HEIC, WEBP • Documents: PDF, TXT, MD • Spreadsheets: CSV • Video: MP4, MOV, AVI, MPG, MPEG, WMV, 3GP, WEBM, FLV • Audio: MP3, WAV, AAC, FLAC, M4A, OGG, OPUS"

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I went to Colorado on vacation, thinking the weather would be like it as home. I brought multiple pairs of shorts and no jacket. This is what April 29th looked like. What a dummy!

A view of Tennessee from a Virginia mountaintop near Bristol. No wonder JD Vance wishes he was from there instead of hundreds of miles away.

Heading down Bogue Sound near Swansboro, NC

One of my life-long problems before I got sober was this feeling of being terminally unique. I was quite sure that no one could understand the complexities of my troubled life. I had my mental list of Bad Things That Have Happened To Me. Then there was my job where I was rarely treated fairly. Who could even beginning to understand my childhood and all the places I'd lived and the fact that I'd left home so early. Add all of that into my habit of marrying people who didn't make me happy PLUS this damn drinking too much situation. I really felt doomed.

The first time I heard someone else say "I've felt different my whole life", my head whipped around. Say what? You too? It's a common theme among alcoholics and addicts. Hell, maybe even normal people occasionally feel different, I'm told. Because we are all variations on a theme, the solution to whatever ails us an a given day isn't as complicated as we might make it out to be. There are a finite number of problems and a finite number of solutions. All most of us need is just some help cutting through the fog.

That's where this simple web site comes in. It's not a complicated AI model requiting you to take an online personality test. No, it's a universal, one size actually does fit all solution to what ails you. Whoever programmed this little gem was wise indeed. Just start clicking buttons, be honest and do what you are told. By the end of it, you won't feel like crap anymore.

Why do I feel like crap

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Unlike most normal people, I've spent a considerable amount of time with criminals convicted of some of the most heinous crimes you can imagine. I've had conversations with men who killed their children, their wives and police officers. I'm not talking about one-off conversations either. Don Woods killed his wife in front of their son while in a drunken blackout. I talked to Don every working day for years, since his prison job assignment was in the area I supervised. He was unfailingly polite and obedient, never complained, made me a card when my grandfather died and called me Mr. Plummer, even though he was 20 years older than me. And, you know what, prison was exactly where that man needed to be.

I don't think I ever spoke a cross word to Don. But, at the end of every one of his work shifts, I escorted him back to the cell block and I locked him behind the cell bars. I did that because he was a convicted murderer. The state found evidence that he'd committed that crime. They charged him. They convicted him. They sentenced him to prison, as they should have. There are consequences for the actions we take in this world, and every so often that just can't be mitigated.

In January, I closed the Facebook account I'd had for 16 years. I had thousands of connections, years of photos and memories of birthday parties, Christmas celebrations, and the birth of several of my grandchildren. I enjoyed interacting with people on the platform. The problem is that although Facebook didn't do me much personal harm, it's run by a man to whom the truth is not important. It's run by people who openly promised dictatorial governments to inform on their citizens. It's used by the enemies of my country to interfere in our political process. How in the world could I tacitly say any of that was OK by using that cesspool of a website?

When Bull Connor, the police chief of Birmingham, Alabama in the early 60s had the cities firefighters turn their high-powered hoses on peaceful civil rights demonstrators, there were journalists there to take photographs. There were editors with courage to run those photos in the newspaper. Faced with those images and others of police dogs being turned on people, the US finally got to the point it needed to get to. Despite the low opinions many had about "trouble-making Negroes", the average citizen decided that no one should be treated the way blacks were treated in the South. We passed a Civil Rights law. We finally got as close to universal suffrage as we are ever going to get.

I realize that there are many people today who would prefer to live in a nation where there isn't so much political tension. That's understandable. I don't like the tension either, but I'm not going to pretend the solution is silence or the acceptance of beliefs and behaviors that fly in the face of my core beliefs. A political disagreement is when we have different ideas on what the property tax rate should be. When we don't agree that all people are entitled to the same basic human rights, that isn't a political issue. It's an issue of morality and ethics. On that, there is no compromise, nor should there be.

It is not OK to think that anyone who criticizes Israel needs to be deported or that trans women should be arrested for using the wrong bathroom or that it's OK to decimate scientific research or OK to remove references to our nation's African-American heroes from museums. People with those attitudes are immoral and unethical. They are mistaken, and they don't deserve a comfortable life or any effort on my part or your part to respect our differences. I don't care how nice they treat me personally or how many hours they volunteer with the Boy Scouts. They are evil and despicable, and I don't want anything to do with them.

Have I made myself clear?

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Backblaze offers two products to Mac users. The first and oldest is an always on backup service that backs up your entire hard drive to the cloud. In the event of a hard drive crash, theft or disaster, they will mail you a USB drive with the entire contents of your drive so that you can restore to a new device. For incremental restorations, you can recover files online after making a request for what you want. Their other product is online storage similar to Amazon's AWS or Microsoft Azure.

The personal backup plan is $9 a month or $99 a year. I've used the service in the past and was impressed by how easy it was to use. I never had an issue
.

There seem to be numerous problems with the business end of the company that do not bode well for its future, however. Morpheus Research, a business analyst, recently released a pretty scathing report on Backblaze.

Backblaze, in our view, is the archetype of a failed growth business and its latest "restructuring" will do little to resurrect the company's woeful capital market performance or transform its undifferentiated storage offering. Its capital markets story has been kept alive by allegedly inflated cash flow forecasts, hidden internal investigations and accounting tricks, which appear to fuel exit liquidity for insiders.

What that means is the company has been using voodoo accounting tricks to hide its massive losses, and the stock and the company are headed for a big crash that could leave any Mac user who depends on Backblaze in a bad place. I would suggest moving to another service as quickly as possible. Wasabi has  plans starting at $6.99 per TB per month that allow you to use your own backup software, like Arq to back up to their cloud servers.

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It’s always a thrill to see native wildlife that we don’t have where I live. I took this photo of a bighorn sheep in Colorado.

Man, the Rocky Mountains sure are pretty. As an Easterner, all my mountain experience has been in the Appalachians, but these western folks just might have something going on too.

David, my favorite Scot, over at The Forking Mad blog has posed a set of simple questions for we IndyWeb types to tackle. Here are my answers. I'd love to see yours.

Do you floss your teeth?

If you are my mom reading this, the answer is, yes, every day. For the rest of you, the answer is no, mouth too small, hands too big.

Tea, coffee, or water?

I like them all, but I only get emotional over coffee. I like an artisanal pour over as much as the next guy, but in a pinch, five-year-old instant Nescafé will do.

Footwear preference?

I don't like laces so for the last eight or so years I've opted for Keene's slip on sandals. They last forever.

Favourite dessert?

I'm partial to fresh watermelon served with quality feta cheese.

The first thing you do when you wake up?

I hit the button on my coffee brewing machine, answer nature's call and check my phone.

Age you'd like to stick at?

I'm going with 48, my age when I last got married and also the year I was in peak physical condition and hiked 2,200 miles in one long epic backpacking trip through the Appalachian Mountains

How many hats do you own?

Twenty-three, primarily baseball style with a couple of flat caps, visors and winter beanies thrown in.

Describe the last photo you took?

My wife and grandsons moments after they finished an eight-mile ascent and descent of McAffee Knob in Catawba, VA.

Worst TV show?

Dukes of Hazard, casual racism and misogyny while mocking Southerners.

As a child, what was your aspiration for adulthood?

At various times I wanted to be a vet, a soldier, a writer. Two out of three ain't bad.

In 2023, I was recovering from an illness and bedridden. I picked up my old iPad and opened my feed reader, which I hadn't done in years. Many of the blogs I'd initially followed circa 2014 were dead, but there were still a few actively posting. Out of boredom, I began to clean out the dead feeds and look for newer and better ones to replace them. That experience led to this blog post. I found so many interesting independent blogs that I decided that even someone like me could get in on the action.

In case you are wondering, RSS is a method of content delivery where information created by bloggers and publishers is delivered to a special program or website that you set up. You can subscribe to RSS feeds, usually for free, and whenever that blog or website is updated, the new information shows up in your feed reader.

Many people I now consider to be my good Internet friends are people I first discovered by seeing them on someone else's blogroll. I spend part of every day looking at my feed reader. Aside from the basic RSS mechanism I describe above, there are ways to use the protocol to do all kinds of things. The best site I have found to not only educate you on RSS but to provide you with access to a huge variety of tools and services is GitHub - AboutRSS/ALL-about-RSS: A list of RSS related stuff: tools, services, communities and tutorials, etc.

I encourage everyone from newbies to co-inventors of the protocol to have a good look around. Click on a few links. Try out some new tools for discovering interesting content.

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As a non-developer, I appreciate how difficult writing good software must be. There are a few tasks that it seems are nearly impossible to prefect. Finding duplicate images is one of them. Apps that use machine logic to identify images with different file names, different creation dates, file sizes and even image dimensions seem to have an almost impossible task. One of my ongoing projects is curating a lifetime of photos that include scanned paper photos, images from various digital cameras and every smartphone my wife and I have ever owned. The images have been in iCloud, in Google Photos, Amazon photos and one various Macs and backup drives through the years. 

I am fine with using multiple tools. I realize after working on this for a while that no single application is going to find all the duplicates. 

I found a great many dupes using Gemini by Macpaw. 

I also used the freeware duplicate finder, ZeroDuplicates. 

I'm now scanning the same directories with another free app and still finding files to remove. The app I am using is a free and open-source offering available on GitHub for macOS, Windows and Linux. It's called dupeGuru and it is pretty powerful in its own right. It has three modes: regular files, music, and images. "dupeGuru is customizable. You can tweak its matching engine to find exactly the kind of duplicates you want to find. The Preference page of the help file lists all the scanning engine settings you can change.

dupeGuru is safe. Its engine has been especially designed with safety in mind. Its reference directory system as well as its grouping system prevent you from deleting files you didn’t mean to delete. 

Do whatever you want with your duplicates. Not only can you delete duplicates files dupeGuru finds, but you can also move or copy them elsewhere. There are also multiple ways to filter and sort your results to easily weed out false duplicates (for low threshold scans)."

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F.Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald

Famous Literary Relationships from Best to Worst ‹ Literary Hub - There have been plenty of great legends about literary love affairs over the years, though of course a great legend doesn't always mean a great love affair. In fact, it often means just the opposite. Here, I've collected a few of the worst (and a few of the best)—from what we can tell from our outside vantage, at any rate. You never do know what goes on in other people's homes. But you might have a better chance if they happen to be writers.

The Stalingrad Incident - In a historic depression, a black american seeks freedom from discrimination and professional limitations in an unlikely place: Russia. The forces of racism follow him overseas, putting his reputation and life in danger.

Web Design Museum - Discover old websites, apps and software - Web Design Museum exhibits thousands of screens and videos of old websites, mobile apps and software from 1990s to mid-00s

24 of the world’s most unusual landscapes - While there are plenty of awe-inspiring man-made destinations around the globe, nothing is as creative as nature. From trees that resemble monsters, to colorful sinkholes, towering rock formations and waterfalls of molten lava, these are some of the most unusual and fascinating landscapes in the world.

The Alabama Landline That Keeps Ringing - If you sit at the James E. Foy Information Desk in the Melton Student Center at Auburn University, answering the phones on a Wednesday night, you might be responsible for answering a question like this: “If you died on the operating table and they declared you legally dead and wrote out a death certificate and everything, but then you came back to life, what are the legal ramifications? Do you technically no longer exist? Do you have to be declared undead by a judge?”

FXRant The Movie Mistake Mystery from Revenge of the Sith - Not just Star Wars - this site has mistakes that made it on to the screen of Goodfellas Aliens, Glory, The Dark Knight, The Abyss and more

Crucial Tracks – the songs that made you - There are points in your life that are defined by music. Whether it’s a song that introduced you to a genre of music that changed the direction of your tastes and style, or a lyric that made you think about the world in a different way. Songs represent relationships. Songs trigger memories. These are all crucial tracks.

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I watched this youngster grow up. I spent so much time with him that I became invisible in his eyes. He often came within a foot or two of me and seemingly learned to pose for pictures.

The red pandas at the Norfolk, VA live in a habitat that visitors wall through. It’s a series of giant oak trees interspersed with towering decks.

I'm often asked to recommend hikes along the Appalachian Trail, a national scenic trail in the Eastern United States that stretches from Georgia to Maine, touching 14 states. My suggestions are typically conditional. If I don't like you, I'm definitely going to suggest you go to Pennsylvania, a state notorious for its extremely rocky conditions that makes hikers curse the slow going and their painful feet.

If you are a stone badass, I'll tell you to head for New Hampshire and Southern Maine. It's often said that 80% of the hard hiking on the AT occurs in that final 20% of the trail.

If you're a good friend in average shape, then I'll advise you to head for the area near Roanoke, VA where you can find a 37-mile loop that will take you to Virginia’s Triple Crown of hiking.

You will hit three beautiful and iconic locations:

• McAffee Knob
• Tinker Cliffs
• Dragon’s Tooth
  
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When I travel, my phone ceases to be an entertainment and diversion device and turns into a real tool. Whether I'm staying in town or on an outdoor adventure, I rely on my phone for directions and information about things to do and places to go. Here are a few of the apps I find helpful.

History Pointer

History Pointer uses your current location to show you locations on the National Historic Register. I was amazed to see how many places in my own hometown were listed. You get maps, Wikipedia excerpts and an augmented reality tour. ($4.99)

Gas Buddy

Last weekend, my gas light came on while I was way out in the country carrying my granddaughter to work at the horse farm that employs her. Luckily, I have Gas Buddy installed. I use it without signing in and only letting it use my location when I'm actively searching for gas.

Organic Maps: Offline Maps

There are some excellent offline map apps that are very expensive. Then there is Organic Maps, an excellent offline map that's free. You just need to plan ahead and download the maps for the area where you plan to travel. It does directions for walkers, cyclists and drivers. It uses Open Street Maps data and was just updated this month.

Rego

Rego bookmarks geographic locations. Whenever we travel, it's easy to find places where we've enjoyed eating in the past. The same with coffee shops and hotels and rental properties. Adding a new location can be done onsite, from an address or pulled from the metadata from a photograph. Bookmarks contain GPS coordinates, street address where applicable, notes, date added and a stock photo or one or more of your own. You can also use custom pin colors and designate any location as a favorite. ($9.99 yr. / $24.99 lifetime)

iExit

If you do any traveling on the Interstate highway system, iExit, helps you find gas, food and bathroom access. I use it on every trip. The information is plentiful and up to date. (IAP $1.99 to remove ads)

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Although I prefer black and white for street photography, occasionally something about an image calls for color.

At the summit of Pike’s Peak after riding the train up from Manitou Springs

People who work with text a lot are familiar with the Mac shortcut to paste the clipboard as plain text -  Command + Shift + Option + V. This shortcut works in many native Mac applications like Pages, Mail, and Safari. When you copy content from a source and use this shortcut to paste, it automatically strips away any formatting. While the shortcut is highly versatile, it only works sometimes. Applications like Microsoft Word or third-party software may not support it natively. You can learn application-specific methods of pasting as plain text. Word has a way to do it. So does Google Docs. It is easier, however, to find and use an application that will just take care of this for you.

A good choice is an app that has been round for over a decade, Get Plain Text, available for free (with an IAP to tip the developer if you'd like to.) "It instantly removes everything unneeded: colors, typeface size, style (for example, boldface/italics), hyperlinks, images, etc. In other words, everything that isn’t plain text! Now you can put plain text in your letters and documents using the copy/paste functions, without having to clean it up manually. Get Plain Text will convert any bit of text into plain text, no matter where you copied it from (a website, PDF document or elsewhere). You can activate the feature manually, or check “Automatically remove formatting” to make the app take care of it every time you copy something."

There are other apps that offer similar functionality if you are sketched out by the length of time since this app has been updated (9 years, LOL). The handling of text formatting is long-established, programmatically, so IMHO, there's nothing to fear.

• TextSoap - $50, multifunctional, also available through Setapp
• PurePaste (free) from Sindre Sorhus - always a good choice. This app can exclude certain apps, preserve links, normalize (quotes, newlines, lists, etc.) and also remove tracking parameters from URLs.
• Some clipboard managers offer this feature as an option in their settings, including PasteBot($12) and ClipMenu (free).

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One of my ongoing projects is organizing a lifetime of digital photos. My collection includes all the smartphone photos taken by my wife and me, the DSLR photos we've saved and scanned photos of multiple generations. The images have been gathered from iCloud. Google Drive, Amazon Photos, family photo albums and many different backup drives accumulated over time. The process includes the removal of duplicate images, renaming, adjusting date information, performing face recognition , tagging and backing everything up. I realized soon after I started that I also need to segregate images that aren't personal, meaning illustrations for blog articles and the many, many photos I've taken at work that still have some usefulness but aren't appropriate to be included in a family collection.

The ultimate goal of organizing photos is being able to quickly find what I am looking for based on these criteria:

• People
• Date
• Location
• Content
• Camera type

So, if I want to find a picture of my brother holding a parrot from a beach trip in 2014 that I took with my iPhone, I have multiple ways to narrow down the search. For people willing to let Google, Amazon or Apple have complete access to their photos, this is simplified by letting their powerful servers do a great deal of the hard work. If, like me, you want to have more privacy, you have to do a great deal of the organization manually or find applications that can do the work on your computer without relying on the Internet.

I decided to use a free and open-source image management program that works on Mac and Linux called Digikam.

I am temporarily using another application with local AI, called Peakto, which can find photos according to subject without using the Internet.

Here are a few tips on photo management

The Ultimate Guide to Organizing Your Photos Tips and Tricks - Are you tired of scrolling through endless photos on your phone or computer, trying to find that one specific picture? Organizing your photos can seem like a daunting task, but with the right tips and tricks, it can be a breeze. In this ultimate guide, we’ll cover everything from creating folders to utilizing software programs, so you can finally have all your memories in order.

What are the best practices for photo organization - Organizing your photos is not an easy task. Where do you start? What is the best way to proceed? Often, we wait until we need to find those photos for a birthday album, website or book before we realize that our photos are disorderly and difficult to locate. Rather than wait till the last minute, only to find ourselves frustrated and annoyed, we could be proactive and follow the advice of experienced photographers.

How To Organize Your Photos, From Backing Up To Tagging Life Kit NPR - We take hundreds and thousands of photos these days because we can. Long gone are the days of film rolls limited to 24 shots. Storage is trending cheaper and more infinite. You don't want to miss any of your dog's cute moments or your kids' as they grow up. But when we have so many digital images and we want to cull them down a bit and get organized, where do we even start?

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Pikes Peak as seen from The Garden of the Gods outside Colorado Springs

The person who causes me more unnecessary work and aggravates me to no end, is that jerk, Past Me. Let me tell you how much he has complicated one of my current projects.

I got an Aura frame for Christmas. It's one of the best gifts I've ever received. It's an electronic picture frame to which my kids can add photos from an app on their phones. I get regular updates on what they are up to. Wonder Woman will sometimes just sit in our living room and watch the photos flow through, commenting on each one as we relive favorite memories. Don't judge me, but there are more than one computer screen also visible in our living room. I got the idea to have them scroll through our entire photo collection using either a screen save or one of several apps. I would rather not curate a collection for it to use, so I just set it to shuffle our library.

Wonder Woman is always doing favors for future Wonder Woman. One of the things she does id quickly delete any non-keepsake photos or memes that end up in her photo library. There is no version of Lou that can be bothered to do this regularly. As anyone in IT can tell you, there are certain types of photos that populate our photo collections. The usable life span for these images is about five minutes, just long enough to get back to a computer and enter information from the photo into some sort of tracking system or management console. These images include:

• Photos of various serial numbers we need when making warranty support phone calls
• Lots of pictures of IP addresses as reported by computers, printers, switches, and the like
• Bar code stickers with asset information for the organization we work for

As a 21st century citizen active on the Internet, I also find it pleasurable to find and share memes that are funny and though provoking. I've done this thousands of times. I know this because I have thousands of undeleted meme in my photo collection. The mad girlfriend meme is represented no less than 22 times in different versions. As humorous as this is, it's not something I want to show up while I am trying to enjoy photos from old trips or my family.

I'm also one of those people who take pictures of my food. It doesn't have to be remarkable or beautiful food either. It's just a way to tag my location when I go out to eat. I have so many damn pictures of fried eggs sitting on top of SOS on toast. I could make an entire album out of just taco pictures. Haha, funny, except Wonder Woman doesn't think so when they scroll past her.

The other categories of strange photos, of which I have way too may, include random shots I took at particular venues to geotag a location for later use. There are also many images from the grocery store that I took, so Wonder Woman could give me the assurance that I was purchasing the correct product. A life-long bad habit of mine is writing down phone numbers but not recording who the number belongs to. I compound this by taking a picture of the naked number and leaving it in my collection. I have dozens of sticky note photos to demonstrate this.

AI is getting better at identifying objects in photos, but it is not good enough to quickly find ALL of anything, especially in large collections like mine. No matte how many times I scan my photos for pictures of bar codes or grocery carts, there are always remnants still lurking about. If I were a smarter man, Present ME would start doing future Me the favor of regularly culling this stuff from my phone. The problem is that Present Me is too busy cleaning up after past me to have the energy or motivation to worry about Future Me, mostly because without any evidence, I tend to think that gentleman will have unlimited time and resources. He is wonderful!

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The waterfront at Edenton, NC, an old colonial town located on the Albemarle Sound.

I love the distinctive sound these make, except at dawn, then it can be a little annoying. #birds

This little community on the coast right at the border between North Carolina and South Carolina is regionally famous for its cluster of seafood restaurants. Folks come from miles around for the fresh caught fish, oysters and shrimp, served with hush puppies, coleslaw and iced tea.

My White Collar Job

The one thing I haven't learned on the IndieWeb is how to spell it. I prefer the variation that uses "Indy" like the car race, the Indy 500, but it seems like the reluctant consensus, as evidenced by IndieWeb.org uses a different spelling, so for once in my life, I'll be compliant and go along with the crowd.

The first time I blogged, back in the 90s, the audience I interacted with the most were all older than me. I was in my late 30s , but my blog was about the Vietnam War, in particular its effect on families. Most of the people I corresponded with were veterans, which was fine, although I was trying to connect with people like myself who were in the next generation. I was glad to lend an ear to the men and women who wrote me. I'd been around those people all my life.

When I blogged my way down the Appalachian Trail, I really didn't have the time or energy (or the connectivity) to form relationships with people online. If someone left a nice comment on our guestbook or sent me an email, I'd respond, but mostly I just told the story of our unlikely honeymoon. A lot of what I wrote was to keep the memories of that time and place fresh for me whenever I wanted to time travel.

So, then I took a 12-year break from blogging. I was on Facebook a lot. I never left Reddit. I dabbled with Twitter and Instagram, but never anything serious. I had photographs on Flickr and SmugMug and a few other sites, but mostly, I didn't spend much time or energy being creative or writing for an audience any larger than myself and the voices in my head. When I became less mobile because of health issues and desperately needed a productive pastime, I luckily landed in front of my laptop with some ideas.

Here's what I have discovered since January 2024 when I wrote my first post on Micro.blog.

There are still friendly people

Since I've been around for a while, I know enough about Internet culture to avoid being a reply guy I also tend to be someone who is quick to hand out deserved praise and to treat people like I want to be treated. Lo and behold, using those "few simple tricks" seems to be the key to mostly avoiding toxicity. I lucked up be quickly finding OMG.LOL, the Mastodon instance I call home, which has puts people first. It's costs $20 a year, and that keeps out the cheap-ass trolls who spoil things for other people. I participate in other communities and have blogs on four different platforms, but the one closest to my heart are the smart, lovable weirdos who habituate OMG.LOL

The US is just a part of the world

The person who inspired me to get involved in Indie Blogging is Robb Knight, who is from England. The IndieWeb scene is decidedly International, and I count that as a Very Good Thing because my own country is a bit of a mess right now. I regularly interact with people from Germany, Portugal, Sweden, Spain, Japan, Scotland, Canada and beyond. It's taught me to look at things differently, to explain things in a bit more detail sometimes and to read with much interest the little tidbits of other people's homelands. If I ever have to take an English driving test, I am quite prepared for multiple questions about trams, as I am told the licensing folks put a lot of those on the tests.

It's OK to be honest

I am absolutely uninterested in creating an online version of myself, who doesn't talk about certain subjects, who has few faults, hasn't made many mistakes and knows all the answers. Instead, I'm the real me, who says what's on my mind, not to be shocking or provocative, but just because life is easier that way. In real life, I am a recovering alcoholic (16 years sober) and I've lived with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder for nearly 40 years, so that's the man I'm going to be online. I readily admit having been married more times than most people, and to have struggled with being a the father I wanted to be. I lack formal education, and I'm not ashamed of it. The people who decide not to interact with me over any of that stuff are not missed.

There are no perfect bloggers

I happen to be a prolific writer, a virtual fire hose of prose, if you will, but that does not make me anything apart from a person who has many files to keep up with. The people who craft one or two gems per month are 100% some of my favorites. IndieWeb blogging is not a competitive sport. It's not about Follower counts, monetization, or page views. As much as I admire clever web design and aesthetics, it's not about that either. To me, IndieWeb blogging is about community, honesty, and creativity. It's being a good neighbor and a helpful and hopefully inspiring presence because, damn, don't we all need a friend and some inspiration?

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There are various ways to launch apps on a Mac. The most obvious and the one used most by new Mac users is clicking icons in the dock. Apple also has Launchpad another built-in launcher. More advanced users sometimes move on to keyboard-driven methods, starting with Spotlight and advanced launchers like Raycast or Alfred, although some don't want the added system overhead or extra features. Some like the convenience of a menubar launcher like Xmenu or Folder Peek. Lately, there has also been a growing popularity among so-called pie menu launchers like Pieoneer.

Another choice now available from developer Baser Kandehir, is a well-thought-out pop-up palette of applications through which you can sort in various ways. The app is called Quick App Launcher - Pro. You summon the application window with a user-defined keyboard shortcut or by clicking its icon in the menu bar. You can choose one of three window sizes to display your installed list of applications, which, without filtering, are displayed in alphabetical order. As you begin to type, the apps filter based on what you've entered. If it works for you, you can scroll through the list and click on what you are trying to launch. There are several methods of launching from the menu, including entering the numbers 1-9 to correspond with the grid pattern, typing a partial match, and clicking one of the choices or typing until nothing else matches, at which time the app will launch.

If you only want to use Quick App Launcher - Pro on a subset of your apps, that's no problem. In the settings, you can toggle off anything you don't want to launch with the app. Everything is turned on by default. You can also choose whether it launches Safari Web Apps or not. Other options in the settings include choices for the background of the application window, toot tip visibility, and whether numbers appear beside the apps while you search. Currently, the numbers are a little difficult to see, so hopefully that feature will be improved. The tool tip and window background features still need some refinement, as the changes I toggled were not apparent. The app does have dark mode compatibility.

The developer told me he is working on additional features and refinements. I would like to see the following:

• The ability to open folders in the finder
• The ability to open files
• The ability to open URLs
• Being able to specify what folders to search for applications, since some people offload big apps to external drives or keep them in non-standard locations.

Quick App Launcher - Pro is $5.00 
as a one-time payment. It collects no data and can be used in Family Sharing.

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Drying chilis hanging from the eaves, a common sight in Santa Fe

What TV Character from a Beloved Show Do You Wish You Could Be Best Friends with in Real Life?

I would really have enjoyed living in the world of Halt and Catch Fire, a show about a ten-year span of the early to mid-80s into the early 90s and the birth of the Internet. My brief interaction with corporate tech culture fell far outside the world of Halt and Catch Fire where the characters worked on cloning the original IBM PC, video games and an early search engine. My favorite character was Cameron Howe, a prodigy of a programmer, a genius and an anti-social, but fiercely loyal teammate. I've worked with some talented women in my career and enjoyed it. I would have loved to live in the era of this show, working at Cameron's video game startup, Mutiny. I love an inspiring, hardworking leader instead of someone who goes home early every day and reeks of their self-importance. Cameron was outspoken, driven, and unpredictable, all qualities I aspire to.

If You Could Binge-watch an Entire Series Again for the First Time, Which One Would You Choose and Why?

When Hill Street Blues had its run on NBC in the 80s, there was no such thing as binge watching. The best you could hope for was that your favorite show would get picked up for syndication. That would not have been a good fit for the show, as it had storylines that lasted throughout the season. Every time I missed an episode, the chances of me ever having a chance to see were slim. Then I got a job working during the show's airtime and totally missed the last seasons. By 2020, when I retired from the public school system, the entirety of the seven season run was available to stream. The only thing I liked about that period of my life was the 90 minutes a day I spent immersed in the fictional world of the unnamed American city where the show took place. It broke so much new ground for TV drama in general and police shows in particular. One of the lead characters was the recovering alcoholic police captain, played by Daniel J. Travanti. The other characters were all believably human. The writers were top-notch. Like many shows from the past, it couldn't be done today. The language was too raw and the topics too fresh. That's a shame.

Name a TV Show that Changed Your Perspective on the World or Taught You Something Valuable

Because I was the kind of kid who paid attention to the news, read the papers and listened to the radio, I grew up with a distinct, but distant familiarity with places like the Shankhill Road, the Falls Road, Derry, Omagh and greater Belfast. All of those places in Northern Ireland were the locations of bombings, demonstrations, attacks, and counter-attacks during The Troubles, the 30-year civil war that came to an end in 1998. Not until much later in my life did I come to know anyone from Northern Ireland, a place I later studied and toured. The show Derry Girls, about three Catholic Girls and their English cousin, was a coming of age comedy made ever so poignant by its setting during the last years of that era. It did a good job humanizing the struggle and the people affected by it. The first episode has British soldiers boarding a school bus to look for a bombing suspect. There were other episodes featuring attempts to bridge the gaps between Catholic and Protestant youth and even one that featured Irish Travelers.

Final Thoughts

I appreciate good TV. When I was too poor to afford cable, I told myself that avoiding television was good for my mental development, That may have been true, but I missed some good shows! I have fond memories of a great many TV moments, nevertheless, from the afternoon sitcoms of my youth (Andy Griffith) to the much anticipated shows of the 70s (Happy Days) and finally the golden era of the 21st century (The Wire).

Inspired by JoelChrono's Post answering the same questions

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Every once in a while, there is a post on Reddit that gets enough high quality responses to warrant being bookmarked and referred to time and again. Such is the case with this recent classic.

# What’s a personal internet hack you use that makes life easier but isn’t widely known ?

Some of the suggestions:

• ctrl+Shift+t - Reopens the last browser tab that was closed. Really handy when you accidentally close the wrong tab. (on a Mac it's command+shift+t)
• Get a great music recommendation each day and don't rely on your streaming services algorithm loop: https://1001albumsgenerator.com
• Don't support Google -> Stop using Chrome. Try Firefox with the uBlock (ad-blocker) extension, it's awesome!
• Don't support Google -> Use https://duckduckgo.com/ or try another one, they're in general pretty good these days.
• Temp emails, great for throw away accounts on various services: https://10minutemail.com/
• Get past paywalls: https://archive.ph/
• I always complete my emails and look over them before I put the destination email addresses in. Prevents me from accidentally sending something I don’t want to send.
• I pay for an email and domain service with the catchall redirected to my own email address - when I sign up for a service I set my email for that service to be [servicename]@mydomain.com, this way when I see spam coming in I know which bastard service sold my details, I then never use them again.
• Use https://cooked.wiki/ to view just recipes -- skip the long, meandering essay that leads up to what you really want. It's like a super-power.
• If you put swear words in your search, you won't get the AI generated answer.
• Learn to paste stuff using ctrl+shift+v It strips away any bold, italics, or colors and some other formatting options. Besides being useful removing crap from the clipboard and making your life easier when pasting for example data to excel it might be helpful when pasting data that came from an a.i. that could be detected and get you in trouble.
  
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This is the fourth collection of free apps reviewed on AppAddict. Links to the first three collections are posted below. I've downloaded and installed each of these on my Mac. I've added many of these apps to my workflows for getting stuff done.

Previous Collections

• A Curated Collection of Free Apps
• Another Curated Collection of Free Software
• AppAddict Free App List Number 3

Free App List Number 4

• Permissions Reset 2 - Free Troubleshooting Tool 
• Zotero as a Free PDF Library Manager 
• UTM for Virtualization 
• rclone - An Easy to Use and Powerful CLI 
• Syncthing - Free and Open-Source Cross Platform File Sharing 
• Convert CSV Files to Markdown 
• Hop to Desk, a Free and Open-Source Encrypted Remote Access Solution 
• One For the Techies - SwiftDefaultApps 
• Digikam is Replacing Apple Photos, Google Photos and Amazon Photos For Me 
• Change the Location of Notifications With PingPlace 
• SmartBackup - Free, Fast and Foolproof 
• Pareto Security - Quick and Easy 
• Local Send - Easy to Set Up and Easy to Use 
• Using Joplin as a Reference Tool 
• Fmail2 for Fastmail 
• Stickier - Free Notes App with Power User Features 
• Cog - Free and Open-Source Local Only Music Player 
• Privileges - Operate Your Mac Safely 
• Use KIWIX to Access Wikipedia and Other Resources Offline 
• Librewolf for Security and Privacy 
• Metadata Lab - Exif Editor 
• Battery Monitor Health, Info 
• Sandkorn - Comprehensive Information on Your Apps 
• Privacy Badger Extension from the Electronic Freedom Foundation 
• Libation - Audiobook Downloader and Converter 
• Captin Solves a Major Mac Annoyance

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Taken by the low road from Santa Fe to Taos.

Opener is so integrated into the way I use my phone that I forget it's an app and not built into iOS. When you're browsing the web in your iOS browser and you come across a link you want to open, usually you have to copy and paste the address to get it into the app you want. Using Opener, you can go straight to the app from your browser or any app that allows sharing a URL. If, like me, you use an iOS browser other than Safari, Opener lets you send links to the browser of your choice. In fact it supports over 40 browsers! It's fully integrated into the share sheet and I have it at the top of mine. Out of the box it supports 240+ apps to include YouTube, Twitter, Ivory, Amazon, Spotify, Reddit and more. You can see a complete list on the developer's web site. It's $2 and well worth it in the App Store.

In the example above, I have an App Store Link on the clipboard. Opener presents all of these options for opening it.

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Subway's Doritos Footlong Nachos Are Here -- and Honestly, We're Into It - It all begins with a tray of Nacho Cheese Doritos, topped with shredded and liquid nacho cheese after a quick stint in the oven. When ordering at the counter, your local sandwich artist will chop red onions and tomatoes to incorporate into the mix before adding jalapeños and a drizzle of Baja Chipotle sauce. You can request steak or chicken for no extra charge

Seth Rogen's criticism of Trump's cuts to science edited out of science awards show coverage - A pointed criticism of President Trump's policies on science by Seth Rogenwas edited out of the filmed coverage of an annual science awards show, it has emerged.

Swamped Skies, a photo with dozens of satellite trails criss-crossing the night skies. "The light pollution caused by satellites is quickly becoming a growing problem for astronomers." SpaceX's Starlink satellites are a particular problem.

"This is my radical proposal for universities: Act like universities, not like businesses. Spend your endowments. Accept more, not fewer students. Open up your campuses and [bring] education to communities. Create a base. Become a movement."

An Ars Technica history of the Internet, part 1 - Ars Technica - In a very real sense, the Internet, this marvelous worldwide digital communications network that you're using right now, was created because one man was annoyed at having too many computer terminals in his office.

2025 Winners and Shortlist Galleries | World Photography Organisation - The Sony World Photography Awards is World Photography Organisation's principal programme. Established in 2007, it is one of the world's biggest and most prestigious photography competitions; celebrating the work of leading and emerging practitioners and attracting tens of thousands of visitors annually to its exhibitions worldwide.

Library Study Shows It’s Just Politicians And Activist Groups Trying To Get Books Banned | Techdirt - What's been noted before has been confirmed yet again: there is no widespread concern about the books kids have access to in public libraries. Instead, there's just the concerted, but effective, efforts of a small group of people who feel everyone else's rights end where their morality begins.

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New Mexico

For the avid app collector there are a few tools available to help catalog and curate the assortment of programs that accumulate over time. You can use Apple's built in system report to get comprehensive information but it's rather dense and not illustrated. You can use an app like Apparency, but then you are limited to a single app at the time. MyApplications, available in the app store for 99 cents, serves as both a database and a launcher for your computer.

The MyApplications general interface includes a count of the number of apps you have installed, 414 in my case. It breaks the apps down into publishers, for example I have 92 apps from Apple itself and six from the wonderful developer Sindre Sorhus. Apparently, many apps don't provide publisher information because I have a lot that are not listed. It also breaks the apps into categories such as utilities, productivity, developer tools, graphics and design etc. The categories, while helpful, are a little too broad for my taste, for example I have 124 labeled as utilities and it seems that could have been further narrowed into categories like disk utilities, archive utilities, etc.

The app interface lets you choose sorting by name or last launched. It tells you how many apps you currently have running and how may you have launched in the past day. If you click on individual apps, you have the option to launch them or to get more information regarding size on disk, location, language localizations, download date and date of last update. A complete permissions report is included. The package contents are listed as is a complete description, apparently from the App store or developer's web site if provided. There are even screen shots provided. 

(This is a repost. I’m out camping with my grandkids and didn’t have a chance to test anything today.)

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One of my recent pleasures is perusing old blog posts from when I used to sit at my desk in the family dining room in the days before I had a laptop and write stories about my children, a constant source of inspiration and entertainment in those more innocent times. They all grew up to be pretty awesome, so they are still inspiring but starting a business, getting massive promotions or conquering the frozen north aren't as funny as the stuff they did as adolescents. We didn't have a ton of money in those days, so having little people to make me laugh was economically necessary. These days I can afford Netflix. Here's another tale from the 90's.

Cereal Boxes

Late last year the cereal companies slashed prices by over a dollar a box on most brands. Suddenly, the lie I had been telling my children since their birth became obvious. When I said, "We don't eat Captain Crunch. All that sugar is bad for you." I meant, "We don't buy Captain Crunch. It costs four dollars a box." Now that the generic box of corn flakes (white box, black letters, CORN FLAKES) and the multi-media hyped Puffed Toast Cinnamon Crunch Smacky Flake Treats cost roughly the same amount, a new cereal culture is evolving at my house.

Any boxes of "sticks and grass" cereal purchased mistakenly or with an eye towards incipient diabetes are ignored or converted to bird food. After 2.5 children ate 4 (yes 4) boxes of cereal in one weekend, I had to lay down the one bowl per child per day rule. How did this go over, you ask. I can tell you in two words, Jethro Bodine. Yes, I caught my oldest daughter, Anna, with the mixing bowl normally used to make brownies for the church youth group (11 high school kids). She hoped that a quart of milk and half a box of Frosted Mini Wheats could forestall starvation one more day.

Some of the trends from the good old days are still with us for nostalgia's sake. No one will eat the last half bowl of cereal left in the box. I usually discover this when I venture into the kitchen after midnight looking for a satisfyingly quick snack. In quick succession I grab one and then another box of sugar coated vapor in an abortive attempt to find an entire bowl of cereal all for myself. I'm usually left with a mongrelized mix of stale Fruit Loops and Grape Nuts. There is always plenty of milk though. I buy milk two gallons at the time to lessen the number of trips I have to make to the grocery store. You may not know it but children cannot tolerate a closed milk jug in the fridge. Both jugs must be opened and it normally makes the most sense to the juvenile mind to use the jug that expires last----first. It is also a kid's rule to always, always, always leave on the counter the little locking strips that come on the caps of milk jugs. If a countertop is unavailable, the strip may be left on the floor or under the counter beside (NOT IN!) the trashcan

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In the mountains north of Santa Fe

The climb out of the Lehigh Valley near Palmerton, PA is one of the hardest stretches of the Appalachian Trail south of New England. When you get to the top of the climb, you are greeted with a wasteland under cleanup by the EPA from an old mining operation. #hiking

It's hard to believe that Apple was once a scrappy little company, just fighting to stay alive and true to its roots, instead of the largest company in the history of capitalism. The fondness that many people have Apple products is tied into the myth and memory of the old Apple. People who long ago chose Macs, usually did so out of a genuine fondness for the company and the products they made. The alternative was Microsoft Windows at its most ruthless and domineering.

I's been a long time, probably more than 20 years since I last used Mac's classic operating system, meaning OS 9.2.2 and below. I spent many, many hours of my life on those machines, installing KidPix and Apple Works for public school kids and their teachers. I could image one of the original bondi blue iMacs in about 90 seconds using a FireWire 400 drive. I also imaged many older Macs by booting from a CD and imaging from a SCSI drive. Good times.

If you ever get sentimental for those days, or, if you aren't an old like me, and you just want to investigate what the experience was like, just hear on over to InfiniteMac where you can run one of many virtual Macs right in your web browser.

The site describes itself like this:

Infinite Mac is a collection of classic Macintosh and NeXT system releases and software, all easily accessible from the comfort of a web browser.

Pick any version of System Software, Mac OS, Mac OS X or NeXTStep from the 1980s, 1990s or early 2000s and run it within a virtual machine. An “Infinite HD” disk with representative software from that era is also available. You can also run a custom version with your choice of machine and disks. On some operating systems files and disk images can be imported and exported using drag and drop and virtual CD-ROMs can be mounted – refer to the welcome screen in each machine for more details.

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I recently noticed an app on Setapp that I'd never tried, Pareto Security, so I investigated it. It's a basic application that checks the settings on your Mac and quickly shows you where you aren't following the best recommended practices from security experts. It has links to tutorials for every setting along with an explanation of why that setting is recommended. Although it is geared towards less technically advanced users, anyone can benefit from a quick scan.

Experienced Mac users are going to familiar with these best practices and will probably have legitimate reasons for any deviation from the suggested settings. Still, it convinced me to change my settings in a few areas:

• I use a third-party firewall app, but I have now also turned on Apple's firewall.
• I also turned on firewall stealth mode
• I turned off native file sharing because I use other ways of sharing files on my network
• I finally decided, for the first time ever, to try operating my Mac as a standard, rather than an admin user. I use an app called Privileges to convert to an admin account for short periods when I need to; otherwise I just enter the username and password of an inactive admin account, which every person should definitely set up.
• I'd delayed turning on File Vault, and this convinced me to finally flip the switch. I have no excuse for waiting so long.

Pareto Security checks the settings in the following areas

• Access security - makes sure all important areas of your Mac are password protected and that your SSH setting are optimized for security
• Application Updates: - Checks your browsers, security apps (e.g., firewall apps like Lulu), alternative terminal and secure messaging apps (e.g., Signal)
• Firewall and Sharing - Checks Airdrop, Airplay, Firewall and all sharing settings
• macOS Updates - It gigs you if you don't have automatic updates turned on, so take these suggestions with a grain of salt.
• System Integrity - Checks your boot settings, File Vault, Gatekeeper, Terminal secure entry, Time Machine settings, and Wi-Fi connection

If you don't have Setapp, you can download a free trial of the app from Pareto and run the checks. I don't see any reason why a personal user would want to run this app continuously but in a managed setting, it is one good way to make sure your users are following the best security settings if you are not managing them through JAM or something similar.

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I took this at 1/125s, and it was nowhere near fast enough to capture the wings without blur. #birds

I swear, this is just an average house in the neighborhood. Everything is old. Not a corner is square, and everything is still used in daily life by mostly working-class people.

Warning: This Goes Way Back

Back in the days of accessing the Internet over a 56,6K modem, someone, probably on AOL told me about "The Walter Miller" homepage, the terribly mis-spelled and grammatically incorrect plain text website of the finniest stuff I have ever read. I'm serious. Con't click the link at the bottom of this post and start reading if you ae trying to drinnk something. You might choke to death or spray expensive red wine across the display of your MacBook.

A snippet from the landing page

ABOUT ME

Im orignally from California but now I live in rural Texas-a lonly area 2 hours from the nearest big city. Ive been here since last December. I moved here because Iam only 20 years old and divvorced and I owe the whole world money. So my family takes over my bills and debits in exhange for me to look after and take care of my granfather. Lets just say I have to haul him up on the crapper whenever he has to go-which isnt often and contributs to him bein cranky most of the time.

Our home consists of a trailor, some outbuildings, a toolshed, asorted shacks, and 2 halfs of a moduler home that were never put together and sit 50 yards apart with plastic sheets drapped over the open parts. We live in the trailor-the other buildings house the varied colections of My granfather. He has 170,000 hupcaps which maybe the bigest colection in Texas. He also colects apliances, spark plugs, books, plumming fixures, beercans, Indian blankets, cooky tins, furnoture, glasware, old typwriters, bottles and car parts, plastic bags, coffe cans, antiques, trashcan lids of pre-World War 2 era, manhole covers, rusty tools, stufed animals, basebal cards, 55 galon drums and steyrofoam. These are just a small sample of his colectibles

Theyre stroon across the whole area like a junkyard. The county has come after him many times. He also has 14 dogs and dog crap is eveywhere. Also the stuffed animals and indian blankets are outside-when it rains they get rancid.

The page is long dead, but it is preserved by the people doing the Lord's Work at The Wayback machine. When you click on this and other links within the site, you might think nothing has loaded. It has. Just scroll down a few dozen lines and pure vintahe Internet comedy genius will overwhelm you.

The Walter Miller Home Page

A vicious rumor - THE WEB'S ANONYMOUS | TIME

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Sign 1 - Unlimited Internet Is Not, In Fact, Unlimited

My Internet service provider sent me a nastygram today, or rather they sent a snitch letter to Wonder Woman because technically the account is in her name. They wished to inform us that we (meaning me) had FAR exceeded the normal amount of bandwidth during our current billing cycle. As a result, according to the nastygram, they will be throttling our connection speed during "congested hours" until the cycle renews. Did I mention that we pay an extra fee each month for an upgrade to our connection speed? Or, that our plan is called "The Unlimited Ultimate Plan"?

I went and looked at the data usage for the month. It's a lot, slightly over 3TB. I haven't been downloading torrents. You think I'm 12? What I've been doing is retrieving my data from Amazon and Google, primarily a lifetime of photographs, but also over 1,000 book purchases, split almost evenly between Kindle and Audible formats. After removing the limits that Amazon tries to impose on usage through digital rights management, I uploaded all the information to European servers.

Well, I guess a billion (trillion?) dollar bloodsucking corporations stick together because Verizon is now discouraging me from making full use of the service I pay them for.

Sign 2 - Ad Free Television Actually Contains Ads

I quit watching ad supported television a long, long time ago. Only once, in 2015, did I watch regular TV and that was only to follow the (almost) undefeated season of the Carolina Panthers. The amount of adverting in a football game, along with the collusion against Colin Kaepernick and the epidemic of brain damage put me off the game shortly thereafter. I pay less for the premium streaming channels than I paid for cable television, even with all the price increases. I opt for the ad-free experience because life is short, and I just don't want to waste it enduring marketing. Now that the fascists are in power and corporations can do anything they like without repercussions, one of the things they are doing is inserting advertising into the feeds of people who pay to opt out of it. What are we going to do? I know what I'll do. I'll go right back to the Lou of the early 21st century and start sailing the high seas again. I gave up the pirate life in 2006, but war is war, and I'll not be trifled with by Peacock, Hulu, Netflix, or anyone else.

Note to "Steve", the anonymous coward who left a comment and thinks that my mockery of torrents and my planned re-embrace of them are worthy of a confused face emoji. You might have a point. I haven't needed torrents in almost twenty years because I am willing and able to pay for the entertainment I consume - as long as I get what I pay for. If the mega-corporations who take my money don't deliver what they promise, then all bets are off.

Sign 3 - You Can Choke to Death on the Bones in Boneless Chicken

Dissenting justice: “The question must be asked: Does anyone really believe that the parents in this country who feed their young children boneless wings or chicken tenders or chicken nuggets or chicken fingers expect bones to be in the chicken? Of course they don’t.

“When they read the word ‘boneless,’ they think that it means ‘without bones,’ as do all sensible people.”

Yeah, a man in Ohio had a bone from a plate of "boneless wings" served to him in a restaurant get lodged in his throat, causing a serious infection. A jury, using what we normal people call common sense, found in his favor when he sued the joint for false advertising. Not to be deterred from protecting pretend people (corporations) from actual real people with, you know, families and jobs, the Republican majority on the state appeals court decided that "boneless wings" describes a cooking style and is not offered as a description of the food you are paying for. They took away the damages that a jury of his peers awarded him in a decision decided by a one-vote majority, One of the dissenting justices was pretty scathing in his critique of how much the court Republicans suck.

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While I have long used Time Machine as my primary backup for my Macs, it does have some drawbacks. If you go looking for a missing file, it's a hit-and-miss operation to find the last known good copy of a document, image or folder. You basically have to work your backwards through your snapshots until the file appears. You also have to know the exact path of what you're looking for unless you are willing to restore in bulk.

The type of backup I need isn't a whole disk backup. I'm fine with Time Machine for that, plus I have the option of using SuperDuper!, Carbon Copy Cloner or DiskDrill. for copying a whole disk, something that is much more nuanced and complicated using AFPS than it was ever using HFS.

After testing several options, some of them excellent, others not so much, I decided to use the free product, SmartBackup because I liked its basic interface, multiple options for backing up, and its easy to understand and use restore mechanism which works through the Finder. SmartBackup will optionally archive changed or deleted files in timestamped folders. You can choose how long you want to keep these files. The restore feature includes a built-in search panel that will show you multiple versions of a file grouped neatly in the results.

The other attractive feature is the speed at which it backs up, especially to an SSD drive plugged directly into a Thunderbolt port. It's engineered to take advantage of SSD technology and even allows you to choose the number of data threads you want active at one time. The default, two, should be used if you are backing up to a mechanical hard drive, but from SSD to SSD, four worked better for me.

The built-in scheduler is simple. You pick a time and specify if you want to perform a daily or weekly backup. It will run in the background without launching a window and notify you when it is done.

SmartBackup works on Intel and Apple Silicon.

You can download SmartBackup at the developer's website.

Note - I tested three other products, two of which work well: FreeFileSync and SyncFolders Pro. The product that underperformed dismally was ChronoSync Express. I'd heard good things about it, but it was exceptionally slow and failed three times to back up my home directory. I was surprised because it had been recommended to me by a couple of people.

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Whenever I go out west, I’m always struck by how drastically different the terrain is compared to the relatively featureless coastal plain here in the east, where I live. This photo was taken on the approach to the Salt Lake City Airport.

What's the most important computer information you've ever lost? Was it pictures, something you'd written, your contacts or your entire phone or hard drive? It's a rare (or dishonest) person who can claim to have never suffered some kind of data loss. I have been asked to help recover wedding videos, a master’s thesis, decades of lesson plans and the accumulated files from an entire ministerial career.

Wherever you have information that is important to you, on your iPhone, Android, Mac or PC or even in a cloud service like Google Drive or Dropbox, do you know if you have taken the right steps to back up your data? A backup means at least two copies, three is better, with one of those stored offsite. Saving your files to a thumb drive or an external drive is not a backup if that is the only copy of them. Even keeping your files in iCloud or Google Drive is not a backup, if losing access to that account would cut you off from your data. People lose access to their online accounts seven days a week for all kinds of reasons. Do all those Google Docs that only live on Google Drive mean anything to you? If they do, then learn how to back them up today.

Back up iPhone - Apple Support

How to Back Up Your Android Phone WIRED

How to back up your Mac - Apple Support

How to Back Up Your Files in Windows 11 Microsoft Windows

Google Takeout

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Some people are so selfless that they seem almost saint-like. They aren't common, but they aren't rare either. There are usually one or two in most work situations. They are the people who seem to have endless patience for answering questions and never seem too busy to lend a hand to people who need it. There isn't a time in anyone's memory when they hurt someone's feelings or made them feel bad. I have never been one of those people. I'd like to think that I'm just an average guy, one who gets a little impatient sometimes, a little stressed at others and who slips up from time to time and says things he wishes he could take back. I have a mental playlist of those occasions that just decides to start running through my brain from time to time.

Once a co-worker made a mistake setting up a school's computer image for a new year and didn't find it until she had erased and reinstalled the software on hundreds of devices. It happens. She was far from incompetent. She just made an unfortunate error and as a result had to do a lot of extra work. It could have happened to me a hundred times over. I was laughing about it with a couple of people on my team, nothing mean spirited, just being glad it didn't happen to me. Yeah, the problem was the person I was talking to was on the phone with her, and she heard every word I said. Ouch. I spent the next five years trying to make it up to her. I felt horrible. Still do when it pops into my mind.

Like many tech people, I joke about being my family's go to for computer issues. I write about it on this very blog. Because I've done this work for so long, it's a rare, rare day when a issue causes me any stress. It might be aggravating, but I'm up to most challenges given enough time. I forget that normal people don't have that mindset. All they know is that this expensive piece of equipment they rely isn't working, and they have no idea why or how to solve it. It is no joke. One Thanksgiving, I was at my poor sweet Mother's house when she came and told a group of us guys that she needed some help with some tech issue after lunch. I started joking with my brother and broth-in-law that they would have to help her because I just didn't have the patience for it, which was jerk of a move and made my mother cry, since what she wanted was in no way a big deal. Man, I wanted to crawl into a hole. I don't know what possessed me to be so callous. Thankfully, I have tried to be the most patient person who ever lived with every tech problem she's asked me to look at since that day. Lesson learned.

Let me be clear. I don't think I am some kind of monster. We all have our ups and downs. I have just as many good memories of having been helpful at work and supporting loved ones in tough times. I think we evolve to have these memories of our mistakes as a way to help us grow. Having a conscience is a survival skill, unless you are some kind of sociopath.

The difficulty in 2025 is that half the country have stopped evolving. They've stopped having a conscience. They no longer feel any empathy for those whose suffering they've contributed to. In fact, they seem to take some perverse pride in it.

Even during times when the economy has been in the dumps and I didn't have much extra money, I was still fine as far as having my basic needs met. I never wanted the state (my employer) to take money away from child nutrition or health care programs just so I could have more disposable income. I think it's a good idea to use tax money to do research on breast cancer and sickle cell anemia, even the chance of me getting those illnesses is minuscule. In no way would I ever think that winning the cosmic lottery and being born a middle-class white American makes me deserving of anything, rather than a poor immigrant whose struggles I cannot even comprehend. Only a sociopath would be uncaring in the face of suffering. Yet, here we are.

In the movies, generally, the bad guys know they are bad people. These days, we are surrounded by horrible people who seemingly have no comprehension of their own rotten souls. The head of the Southern Baptist Convention recently gave an interview explaining why empathy isn't Christlike. How do these people even sleep at night? I feel bad about hurting someone's feelings 15 years ago and my fellow Americans are celebrating their president taking away aid from a country under attack from an invading marauder. I just don't get it.

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One of my favorite tech writers, Justin Pot, who publishes a lot over at Lifehacker, reviewed a new to me app today called PingPlace. If something happens on a Mac, someone is going to figure out a way to tweak it. This free app moves the pop-up location for notifications from the upper-right corner's default, to just about anywhere else on your primary display that you'd like to see them appear"

• Top Left
• Top Middle
• Top Right
• Bottom Left
• Bottom Middle
• Bottom Right

Reasons For moving the default location include the size of your monitor, or just plain personal preference.

The only real option in the settings is to have the application launch at startup, which only makes sense.

The apps requirements are a minimum of macOS 14 and accessibility permissions.

You can download it on GitHub, or even better, get it via HomeBrew.

brew tap notwadegrimridge/brew
brew install pingplace --no-quarantine

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I forgot to put out and chow for my backyard friends, and this gut came down to the deck to give me an earful and a few scornful looks.

What are the qualities of a good day for you? I'm talking about an ordinary good day, not the birth of a child or getting promoted kind of good. What has to happen for you to go to bed with a smile on your face?

For me, good days almost always come after a good night's sleep. Although I can almost always fall asleep easily, I'm turning into one of those old people who can't seem to string together eight hours to save my life. Today, I managed to sleep until almost 4:30 AM, which is the latest I've been in bed all week.

Although the presence of coffee does not guarantee a good day, the absence of it almost assuredly means getting anything done will be extra challenging. Today, we had coffee, so there was no crisis. I also just ordered one more shipment of Barry's Tea before our Amazon Prime subscription expires in a couple of weeks. Somehow, I ended up with four boxes of this delectable nectar from the Emerald Isle. I switch over to drinking it mid-morning and continue to make a brew every couple of hours throughout the day.

I like being productive. These days, in retirement, I can pick out my projects. The primary one I'm working on now is organizing nearly 100,000 photos, a lifetime's worth from several generations. It gives me a unique opportunity to come up with new technical solutions while being submerged in the great memories old photos bring back. That's digital photos going back to the 90s, the quantity of which drastically increased when we got smartphones. It's also massive amounts of DSLR shots from a time when I spent many hours a week pointing and clicking at anything remotely interesting, including trips all over the country to take photos. Finally, there are scanned family snapshots going back decades for both my wife and me.

I like my solitude very much, but I also relish family time. One of our daughters and her husband are going to a concert tonight (Disturbed) and we agreed to watch their kids overnight. They live a couple of hours a way, but made the drive all the way here to drop off their offspring. I was prepared with plentiful snacks and drinks. As soon as their folks left, I proposed a trip to the old school arcade in town, to which they instantly agreed. We spent a couple of hours playing pinball, skee-ball and trying in vain to extract loot from claw machines. Nobody whined or complained. My granddaughter, age five, got a little teary when she failed to win a stuffed animal, but her heroic high school aged brother deftly cheered her up immediately by giving her all his tickets for her to redeem at the prize counter.

The evening was spent eating food I didn't have to cook in a house remarkably calm despite the presence of young people. The only loud noise was the kids laughing at each other. Wonder Woman went to bed early since she has to work tomorrow. In the morning I'm taking the kids out for pancakes at my favorite diner, which is right down the street. I'm eagerly awaiting another good day.

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The Italian philosopher and novelist, who came of age in Mussolini's Italy, penned a list of the 14 characteristics of fascism, all of which are currently present in the United States.

1. The cult of tradition. This is the belief that the truth is already known once and for all. Fascists believe there is no need to advance in learning.
2. The rejection of modernism. Fascists reject the Enlightenment and its evidence-based rationality.
3. The cult of action for action’s sake. Fascist leaders act impulsively, without thinking or planning ahead.
4. No analytical criticism. Fascists ignore nuance and see any disagreement as treasonous.
5. Fear of difference. Fascists fear diversity. Thus they are racist by definition.
6. Appeal to a frustrated middle class. An economically frustrated and/or politically marginalized middle class is easy to stir to anger.
7. Obsession with a plot. Because the followers must be made to feel besieged, an internal “enemy” is provided: Immigrants, Muslims, Hispanics, Blacks. (Historically the Jews were often made to be “the enemy.”)
8. Anti-elitism. The followers are made to feel humiliated by the wealth and strength of the educated “elite.” This is used to create resentment.
9. Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. Fascists believe that life is permanent warfare. Therefore a desire for peace is treasonous.
10. Contempt for the weak. A fascist leader despises his underlings, who in turn despise those under them. They all either mock or ignore the poor, the sick, and the disabled.
11. The cult of heroism. The Fascist is eager to die a hero’s death. In his impatience, he frequently sends other people to their deaths.
12. Machismo. Fascists show disdain for women, disregard for chastity, and condemnation of homosexuality.
13. Selective populism. Under fascism, the “voice of the people” is not the democratic majority, but only the voices of those who support the leader.
14. Ur-fascism speaks Newspeak. Just as in Orwell’s 1984, Fascists use an impoverished vocabulary and an elementary syntax to limit complex and critical reasoning.

Smart People Say We're There

The rise of end times fascism Far right (US) The Guardian - The governing ideology of the far right has become a monstrous, supremacist survivalism. Our task is to build a movement strong enough to stop them

American Fascism Then (1939) and Now (2025) Columnists insightnews.com - Historian Heather Cox Richardson reminds in a recent article that there was a time in American history when the Nazi Party, while still somewhat on the fringe, enjoyed a level of "normalization" in the run up to the start of World War II in 1939 that bears eery resemblance to the modern push for fascist extremism in the United States.

How the US Went Fascist Mass Media Make Excuses for Trump Voters – BillMoyers.com - Trump's racism and xenophobia violates America's core beliefs — yet the media and many Americans are okay with it.

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One of my current strategies to minimize the ability of tech companies, starting with Google, to use browser fingerprinting to extract information from my browsing habits involves rotating among a half dozen browsers on my Mac. Because I have long used Chromium-based browsers and the extension ecosystem associated with them, I've had to find some alternatives for Safari, which I am using as part of my rotation. Unlike most Chrome and Firefox extensions, many Safari add-ons incur a cost, usually small. These are the ones I opted to buy. I'm sure some of the long-time Safari users out there have some suggestions for alternatives or criticisms of some of these choices. You are welcome to school me, I won't be offended. I also realize that watching ad-free YouTube on Safari is a never-ending battle. I have alternative solutions for that, primarily using FreeTube.

• Homecoming for Mastodon on the App Store - The $2.99 app redirects any Mastodon link back to my home instance so that I don't have to log in repeatedly when following links to people who use other servers.
• MarkDownload on the Mac App Store - This $2.99 app copies the URL of the current tab in Safari as a Markdown link. It can also copy the entire web page to your clipboard as Markdown or make a Markdown list of all the open tabs in your browser.
• Baking Soda - Tube Cleaner on the App Store - This $1.99 app is a Safari extension that replaces custom video players (except the YouTube player) with a minimal HTML video tag. It standardizes your video experience from site to site, including videos saved by collaborative meeting sites.
• Acidity - View Page Archives on the App Store - This free extension is the best paywall remover that I've found for Safari and it rivals anything I've ever used on other browsers.
• MousHero for Safari on the Mac App Store - This $1.99 extension, MousHero is a Safari extension that adds automation superpowers to your browsing experience: trigger URL actions by adding up to 3 custom context menu items to Safari's right-click menu. You'll be able to launch apps, services and automations (for instance with third-party applications such as Shortcuts, Keyboard Maestro, Drafts, etc.), optionally passing the currently selected text, destination link, current page URL and title as parameters.
• Wipr 2 on the App Store - Since there is no uBlock Origin or Privacy Badger for Safari, I chose the highly regarded ad and tracker blogger from Indy developer, Kaylee Calerolla to handle those tasks for me - $4.99
• Hush Nag Blocker on the App Store - Browse the web like it should be – free of nags to accept cookies or privacy invasive tracking. It's tiny, fast, free, open, secure and without any access to your data.
• Vinegar - Tube Cleaner on the App Store - For $1.99, Vinegar is a Safari extension that replaces the YouTube player with a minimal HTML video tag. It removes ads, restores picture-in-picture, and keeps videos playing in the background.
• Stop the Madness Pro Extension for Safari, Chrome and Firefox AppAddict - Offers extensive customization on a site by site basis to combat data harvesting and dark practices by social media and other sites. $14.99

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Do yourself a favor and purchase a couple of thistle seed socks because that’s all you need to attract Goldfinches like this to your yard if you live in the right place in North America. They are beautiful birds. #birds

It truly seems like there is an unending river of new Mac apps to check out. I once worried that I would not be able to find enough apps to continue writing about them daily. These days I wonder how I will ever find the time to download, test and review all the interesting software I discover. When it comes to discovery, I rely on tips from readers first and foremost. If an app is good enough for someone to take the time to tell me about it, it must be special. I also have a full complement of sites that I look at regularly to see what is popular, what has been updated and what’s just been released. Take a look. 

AppAddict Source Websites

• MacUpdate Search - this is a bookmark to the recent releases of free apps
• Discover Software & User Reviews Tool Finder - a comprehensive site with YouTube videos, reviews, links and more
• Open Source Software, Open Source Alternatives, OSS Software - A decidedly technical site that I keep looking through for stuff easy enough for somebody like me to understand
• thriftmac - Over 400 quality totally free Mac apps
• Mr. Free Tools - The Best Free Tools & Resources - Not just software, but also web services
• Recently Added – MacMenuBar.com - One of the best software sites in the Mac ecosystem, run by luuk, a friend of AppAddict
• Apps - MacSources - Comprehensive reviews
• Today on Mac - More good reviews
• Top Mac Apps - Top 1000 Apps - the website of the MacUpdater App
• Premium macOS apps gone free or on discount - Score the occasional free App Store gift code here
• Best Privacy Tools & Software Guide in in 2025 - Has been an big help to me in securing my data and ensuring my privacy
• GitHub - Axoraxawesome-free-apps Curated list of the best free apps for PC and mobile - A long, long list of apps to investigate

A Preview of the Pipeline

These are individual apps and services that I've bookmarked to download and test for possible reviews on App Addict. If you are fond of any of these, please let me know why you like it. Also, if you've tried any of these and found them lacking, give me a heads-up on that too.

See potential AppAddict candidates on Raindrop.io.

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The 40 Best Anti-Fascist Films of All Time - In light of recent events, it might be a good time to remember a very simple truth: Nazis are ALWAYS the bad guys.

A Tour of Ancient Rome's Best Graffiti: "We Have Urinated in Our Beds ... There Was No Chamber Pot & More| Open Culture - Apart from the likes of bra­vo and piz­za, graf­fi­ti must be one of the first Ital­ian words that Eng­lish-speak­ers learn in every­day life. As for why the Eng­lish word comes direct­ly from the Ital­ian, per­haps it has some­thing to do with the his­to­ry of writ­ing on the walls — a his­to­ry that, in West­ern civ­i­liza­tion, stretch­es at least as far back as the time of the Roman Empire.

10 rumors involving Trump's press secretary, Karoline Leavitt So, the question is, does she spread more rumors from the White House podium than are spread about her because of her wackadoodle behavior and inexperience.

1995 Was the Most Important Year for the Web - The History of the Web - 1995 is a fascinating year. It's one of the most turbulent in modern history. 1995 was the web's single most important inflection point. A fact that becomes most apparent by simply looking at the numbers. At the end of 1994, there were around 2,500 web servers. 12 months later, there were almost 75,000. By the end of 1995, over 700 new servers were being added to the web every single day.

These Are the 7 Best Browsers That Aren't Google Chrome - STOP USING CHROME!! Chrome was once a great browser, but it's known to be slower, battery-draining, a memory hog, and collects massive amounts of user data. If you want something better than Chrome, you don't have to pick one. Each option excels in certain situations; you should try them to find what best suits your needs without much compromise.

The Income Needed to be Middle Class in Every U.S. State (2025) - Middle class is defined as earning between two-thirds and twice the median household income.

The Dark Side of Apple Development: Why Developers Are Struggling On Apple’s Increasingly Hostile Platforms – Magic Lasso Adblock = "They would rather have a ChatGPT or TikTok than an OmniFocus or Magic Lasso. Apple is too big to fail, which means it's too big to care." - Ian Betterridge

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These little nuthatches are easy to spot because of their habit of descending trees headfirst, like the one in the photo.

The Downy Woodpecker is the smallest woodpecker in North America. They are easy to attract with inexpensive suet feeders like the one in the photo. #birds

For anyone who wants to eliminate as much friction as possible in creating backups of their iPhone photos outside of iCloud, most people have long turned to apps from big tech companies like Google, Amazon, and Dropbox. They all have apps that will gladly upload your photos on to their servers, where you can be assured they will extract every bit of data about you that they legally (hopefully) help themselves to. 

Using the paid iOS app, PhotoSync, you get the ability to wirelessly and automatically send copies of your photos to the file system of your computer, a long list of commercial cloud services, plus my choice, custom WebDAV servers. I store my photos on non-US systems with strong encryption because privacy matters. 

PhotoSync has various options to name and organize your exported photos. You can also have multiple options for formats: raw +JPG, HEIC, JPG and various choices for handling Live Photos and videos. You can include or exclude metadata, including GPS locations. Additionally, you can export both the edited and original versions of a photo or just one of those choices. 

If you want to get photos from your phone to your Mac, where you can edit them, decide on what you would like to archive and create a name and folder structure to your liking, there is a free macOS companion app that facilitates that. It also lets you move photos from your computer to your phone without using Apple Photos. 

The Photosync iOS app has various pricing models, both subscription and lifetime purchase options, the latter running $24.99 for the premium version which adds extra features: 

• In-app camera for instant transfer
• Client-side encryption
• Backblaze, Amazon S3 and Wasabi support
• Advanced Siri Support and shortcuts
• Downloads from DSLRs right to your phone
• Upcoming feature to organize your iOS library on your Mac

Photosync has been in the App Store for 14 years, and I have used it off and on for most of that time. With my current focus on protecting my data from big tech companies, I will be using it more and more.

The other newsletter is for this blog, one app review delivered to your mailbox every day. in case you don't have enough software in your life - Subscribe | AppAddict Newsletter

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One of the joys about being a prolific reader is the opportunity to become fascinated and informed about all kinds of things that are totally outside your lived experience. In the 70s, as a fifth grader, I read the book The Black Stallion by Walter Farley. This led to an immediate and long-lasting fascination with horses, even though I've never seen thoroughbreds race and have only ridden about a dozen times. Actually, as a pre-school child in a time before I have clear memories, my mother bought me a book about horse breeds which I promptly memorized. I think my parents used me as a party trick to show off that particular skill.

The 70s were a good time to be interested in horses and racing. Secretariat had won the Triple Crown in 1973 in a fashion so dominating that it may never be matched. He won the final race, the Belmont Stakes, by an unimaginable 50 lengths. He was the first to win all three races in 25 years. Many sportswriters went so far as to name Secretariat as one of the 20th century top athletes. Then in 1977 and 1978 there were Triple Crown Winners in back to back years for the only time ever. The person who rode Affirmed to victory in 1978 was a teenager, Steve Cauthen, who became the only jockey ever named Sports Illustrated's Sportsman of the year.

I asked for and received figurines of famous horses for Christmas. I read every book the library had about them. I was especially interested in thoroughbreds, but anything horse related was worth investigating. I studied my grandfather's collection of World Almanacs for the lists of names of the horses who had one the famous US races. I knew as much about Man O' War, the legendary horse from the early 20th century, as I did about Babe Ruth, the ultimate star of my other favorite sport, baseball.

Although I did not get to see them until I was an adult, I read all the books I could find about the feral horses of the islands on the eastern seaboard, including, most famously, Misty of Chincoteague. I am always happy to see the horses on Ocracoke Island and other coastal areas of North Carolina where I visit. I was pleasantly surprised when the book, Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand became a bestseller and read it eagerly. by One of the highlights of my Appalachian Trail thru-hike was the day we hiked Grayson Highlands state park in Virginia where a delightful band of feral horses greets lucky hikers. I've been back there several times to see them.

These days, I'm lucky to have a granddaughter who has several years of experience riding and competing in horse shows, including dressage and jumping as well as cross-country. She's worked hard to develop her skills and recently got promoted from the junior level to the senior level of competition. She rides an American Quarter Horse named Say Pepsi Please, who she is naturally very fond of.

Unfortunately, the so-called sport of kings that sparked my interest in the whole scene has been ruined (like baseball and professional cycling) by rampant use of performing enhancing drugs, resulting in an epidemic of death among the equine athletes. Attendance at famous tracks has declined sharply, and the allure and mystique of the entire scene no longer interests me. Like most Americans, I only pay attention to the Triple Crown races, and then only superficially.

Still, I love an opportunity to watch or spend time with horses, even if it's just an old mare eating grass in a pasture. It is good to have things you enjoy, don't you think?

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Spending $5 on a plastic sugar water dispenser is so worth it. #birds

Have you ever seen or read about the people who can memorize the exact order of multiple decks of cards? Those people are freaks and they scare me, so I'm not advocating those kinds of skills, but who wouldn't like to be able to retain information more easily? Several years ago I came upon a free PDF version of The Roth Memory Course by David M. Roth, first published in 1918. Written in the stilted and formal British English of the era, Roth presents seven lessons and techniques to memorize more information than you ever though possible, using methods you could teach to a child. I read the book and learned the techniques and, while I kept my skill sharp, could easily recite lists of 100 random words in order. That's a neat party trick, but not very useful otherwise. The practical use was learning dozens of technical acronyms and terms while studying for IT exams.

It's an easy read and a fun self study exercise. If you look around, you can find the PDF version, although hardcover and kindle versions also exist.

Roth Memory Course A Simple And Scientific Method Of Improving The Memory And Increasing Mental Power by David M. Roth

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Apple Photos is fine for backing up the pictures I take with my iPhone, but its proprietary database that keeps users from accessing their files except through the software is for the birds. A corrupt photos library can cut you off from all your memories. I long used Google Photos and Amazon Photos as secondary backups of not only my iPhone photos, but also scans and the pictures I take with my DSLR. Since I decided to stop doing business with big tech to the extent possible (except Apple), I downloaded my collections from both companies, consolidated them, removed the duplicates and began looking for a management solution that has the features I want. After much testing, I've decided to go with the free and open-source solution, Digikam It has been around for years but is under active development. Version 8.6 was just released in March 2025.

Digikam easily loads my photo library, which contains nearly 100,000 images and over 420 albums, which are primarily collections of images from every month of this century. I can view my images as they appear in the file system, or group them according to tags, labels, geolocation or other metadata. Digikam eliminates the need for certain types of image utilities such as EXIF editors and duplicate photo finders because the functionality is built in.

It has robust export capabilities to photo management sites like Flickr, SmugMug, Google Photos and more. You can also send your collection to all the major US cloud storage companies like Dropbox, Box, Google Drive and more. You can also send images to social media sites as well. I wish it had WebDAV support, since I am using European cloud servers now.

Digikam makes it easy to for whatever your photo related workflow needs happen to be. If you are a photographer who needs to import an SD card from a day of shooting at an event, it can handle imports with batch edits and data processing using the same techniques as Lightroom. If you are someone like me with a large collection of digital images you want to curate, it has all the organizational tools you can think of. If you just want to have a nice way to look at your images, it has an easy-to-access slide show feature and the ability to scan and display any combination of folders or albums you select.

There are a couple of drawbacks. It's a huge program, weighing in at around 1 GB, mostly because it is packed with so many open sourced editing tools. My photos are in a folder that I sync between two computers, but I can't use a version of Digikam on more than one device because the path to the folder that holds my images is different since one is a Mac and the other is a Linux box. The facial recognition is good, but it's not as good as what Google Photos has which is so accurate it scares me. I'm glad I removed my data from their clutches.

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Neither the baby nor the dog were too enthused about being photographed.

For as long as I have been married to Wonder Woman, our specialty has been the weekend getaway. From our base of operations in southeastern North Carolina, we are just a few hours away from the coast and the mountains. We can easily drive to one of several metro areas, national forests, state parks or festivals. Some of our favorite places where we've stayed many times are one-room rental cabins in the Uwharrie National Forest, camp sites at Jones Lake State Park, cottages in Damascus, VA, and a hotel with suites near Umstead State Park in the Triangle area of NC. Over the years we've taken various airplane trips too, to NYC, Santa Fe, Colorado Springs, the Bay Area of CA and Northern Ireland among others. Those big trips are fun but exhausting. I like the little ones, where I can just relax and be comfortable in surroundings that have grown to be comfortable.

When it comes to food and fine dining, I'll admit that a nice meal in a fancy restaurant can be enjoyable, but more often I would prefer to get some street tacos from a trailer on the roadside. There is a lot to be said for a good frozen pizza when I don't feel like cooking. As summer approaches, the time for a simple tomato sandwich with mayo draws near. The older I get, the less willing I am to spend an hour chopping ingredients into smaller bits and dirtying up multiple sets of measuring spoons and cups, If a meal takes longer than 15 minutes to prep, cooking stops being fun and becomes more like a chore.

In my drinking days, I tried 20-year-old single malts and expensive French red wine, but honestly, I was just chasing a feeling, not a taste. All that money was wasted. Few things in life taste as good as an ice-cold Coke when I am really thirsty. I played high school football in the bad old days, when the coaches thought that depriving you of water for three hours in hot August sunshine built character. The intense thirst we'd build up during those practices was one of the most miserable feelings I ever had. I've run out of water while hiking too when an expected source for refilling my bottles turned out to be dry. The relief at finally finding a small trickle of a spring just before sunset is something I still remember years later.

Occasionally, the best part of a day is simply taking my shoes off when I get home and sitting down on the couch for a minute, with no one asking me questions or expecting me to do anything. Although I have an outgoing personality and can make conversation with anyone, I also have the introvert's desire for quiet time at home to recharge my batteries. I like people, I do, but I also like my own company and the chance to start or finish a personal project that is important to no one but me is something I treasure more than an invitation to the coolest party.

One of the best feelings in the world is the privilege of going to sleep when I want to. My love for a nap is second only to my love for my family. Being able to sleep anywhere, anytime is my superpower and the only lifelong skill I learned in the military. I worked a third shift job for two long years in the 80s. It was horrible, staying up all night and trying to sleep during the daytime in a house where other people were living normal lives. I wasn't smart enough then to put up blackout curtains or to use an eye mask or earplugs or a white noise fan. Nope, I just crawled into bed in a brightly lit room and counted on nothing more than fatigue to make me rest. Never again.

I don't get any more of a buzz buying something expensive than I do when I get a ninety-nine cent app for my phone that does something unique. Yes, the one every four years or so purchase of a new computer is cool, but I've had just as much fun over the past few moths tinkering with two machines I built from spare parts out of the trash at work.

Day to day comfort is what I crave and what I have. I don't get bored easily, and I appreciate the little things because in the end, they are what truly matter.

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To preserve more of my privacy, I am now using different browsers on a rotating basis. This helps to cut down on fingerprinting to an extent. I am used to customizing my browsers extensively so it's been an ongoing project to get extensions installed, DNS over https set up, changing default download behaviors, testing ad blocking and more. I have not regularly used Safari for many years, even on iOS, so it's taken some getting used to. There isn't 100% overlap between what's available for Mozilla and Chromium browsers and Safari. Additionally, many popular Safari extensions cost money, much more so than on other browsing platforms.

One extension that I got today is one that I've been looking at for a long time, but never tried is StopTheMadness Pro, by Jeff Johnson of Underpass App Company because a universal license is $14.99 and that's a little much for something I wasn't going to use frequently. But, times change, and today I installed it and started configuring the many, many options. I immediately found out that since the last time I looked at it, the developer has released extensions for Chrome and Firefox. There is one primary reason for installing this extension., social media and marketing web developers use all sorts of underhanded techniques, and that's part of the madness this app lets you combat.

The extension has gotten a lot of praise in the tech press from noted journalists like John Gruber of Daring Fireball:, Federico Viticci of AppStories/MacStories, and Glenn Fleishman of Macworld.

Have you ever noticed that when you visit certain websites, the contextual menu (Control/right-click) gets disabled? And other things change too. You can’t copy and paste elements on the page. You keep typing in a field, but extra characters aren’t recognized, and you don’t even get a warning. Likewise, you can’t select text or drag an image from a page to the Finder. And when you try to close a tab, you have to click a Safari warning to proceed. Autocomplete and autofill don’t work or mess up. You can check out the StopTheMadness’ demo page without the extension installed to see these restrictions in action.

The extension has more features than I can fit in a single review. It supplements rather than replaces your current ad and tracker blocking. It doesn't have GreaseMonkey's full set of tools for user scripts, but the ones it does have are useful. Furthermore, it can hide page elements and let you use custom CSS on any site.

The pro version that was released last year added:

• Universal Purchase in the App Store for iPhone, iPad, and Mac
• Automatic iCloud sync of StopTheMadness Pro settings between all of your devices
• Platform-specific settings, so you can have different settings on iPhone, iPad, or Mac while still using iCloud sync
• Presets: Easily assign the same specific website options to multiple websites
• Customize the list of query tracking parameters automatically removed from URLs, including URL domain-specific removal
• Hide Page Elements: New global list separate from the custom CSS option, so you can hide web page elements without creating new website options
• Contextual menu item to Hide Page Elements (macOS)
• Stop websites from overwriting your system clipboard
• Set custom cookies on websites
• Stop web animations
• Tab Rules enhance and replace New Tab Behavior
• Hide "We'd like to send you some notifications" banners on many websites (macOS)
• Automatically toggle off the YouTube autoplay button
• Temporarily disable the extension just on the current page
• Import and export settings files with the Files app (iOS)

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For some reason, those of us who live on the Internet have a fascination with the subscriptions other people are paying for. I'm happy to share mine with the world. Maybe you can find some interesting services or apps in my collection. My total costs are down about $40 a month since I last updated in October.

To see the entire list, go here.

What I eliminated

• Google One - Saved $10 a month (technically, I still have access to Google Drive through my cell phone plan, I'm just not storing anything there any more. I do use Gemini, Google's AI to help me with scripts)
• Hulu - Saved $18.99 a month
• Overcast - Saved $14.99 a year. I just don't listen to podcasts any more.
• Setapp - Saved $12 a month. I still use Setapp, but I no longer have to pay for it since accepting their offer to be ab affiliate.
• Amazon Prime - Saved $139 a year - because screw Jeff Bezos, that's why. I also canceled the Washington Post and Audible.

What I added

• Fastmail - Cost $96 a year for Two users. Since I no longer give the world's largest data extraction company access to my email, I had to find a place to host it, I'm happy with Fastmail so far.
• kDrive - Coast $7.24 a month. Since I no longer have access to Google Photos or Amazon Photos, I need a cloud solution and this Swiss company's 3 TB plan is the best bargain I could find that had good reviews and satisfied customers.
• Medium -Cost $4.99 a month I have a friend who started a Medium blog, and I wanted him to be able to see that I subscribed, so no more paywall avoidance for me.

New App Subscriptions

• Cheatsheet - I wanted this app forever. I love having short notes on my watch ($5.99/yr)
• Quick Reviews - How could I not support Matt Birchler? ($9.99/yr)
• Quotify - Ongoing search for a good quotes app ($.99a month)
• Quotz - see above ($2.99/yr)
• Reeder - I'm testing out all the timeline apps ($1/month)
• Skeetz for Bluesky- So much better than the standard app ($1.99/mo)
• Tapestry - another timeline app ($1.99/mo)
  

Some days I just lay out a buffet on the railing of my deck and sit back with me camera to take pictures of all the freeloaders. Note, this particular squirrel is so lazy that he lays down to eat.

I’ve picked up so many visiting friends and family from the old train station in town.

Joe Hill, Labor Organizer, Murdered by the state at the behest of mine owners

I've always enjoyed reading a good biography. Taking a deep dive into the life of an interesting person is a fun way to learn, not only about them, but also about the times they lived in. Aside from books, just picking up facts about various people is a natural inclination for me. I'm blessed with the ability to remember facts, which makes me good at Trivial Pursuit and impressing myself while watching Jeopardy, if nothing else. Occasionally, when I discover a particularly admirable person, I feel cheated for having lived so long without having had the opportunity to know about them previously.

I can be picky about the people I let into my admiration society. Take Steve Jobs, for example. His decisions and leadership at Apple went a long way in providing me with a career I enjoyed immensely, and also a continuing fascination with technology. The problem is that he was a stingy man who was cruel to his daughter and a real asshole to many other people. He doesn't make my list. I'm not 100% consistent, though. John Lennon wasn't the greatest dad to his firstborn son, Julian. He was also a jerk to Julian's mother. Still, his devotion to his family later in life, his absolute genius and his honesty override all that.

One of the people it took me too long to discover was Fannie Lou Hamer, one of the giants of the civil rights movement. A tiny woman from Mississippi, she uttered a phrase that captures my life's philosophy perfectly, "Nobody is free until everybody is free." She was famously courageous, organizing voting drives during the days when the KKK routinely killed activists. She was outspoken and effective, so much so that Lyndon Johnson was held an emergency press conference to try to upstage her during the 1964 Democratic Convention.

When Bruce Springsteen released his live album in 1986, he included the song by Woodie Guthrie that everyone knows, This Land is My Land. While introducing the song, The Boss mentions a book, Woodie Guthrie, A Life by Joe Klein. I bought that book and read it. In my estimation, Woodie Guthrie was one of the most important artists of the 20th century. Not only did he influence Bob Dylan and the whole mob of folk singers who came after him, he also did a lot to inspire other artists to take the kind of political stands I admire. Born and raised in Oklahoma, he grew up with the racial attitudes of the day, but later in life, outgrew that and developed a more nuanced and thoughtful outlook on race, becoming friend with and an advocate for Leadbelly, among others.

Hugh Thompson was an Army helicopter pilot in Vietnam, like my father. On the day when a company of infantrymen from the Americal Division were systematically murdering hundreds of elderly men, women, and children in the hamlet of My Lai, Thompson landed his aircraft outside the village and ordered his door gunner to open fire on the next American he saw murdering civilians. He got out of the helicopter and tried to reason with the rampaging soldiers, eventually saving several lives by evacuating villagers before they could be killed. He later testified against the accused killers at their courts-martial.

My grandmother's brother, Gratton McFadyen, died a hero fighting the Nazis in Italy during World War Two. Although his military specialty was technical and not in combat arms, on the day he died he joined the fighting against the Germans anyway. He was awarded the Silver Star posthumously for his actions.

Harper Lee lived and wrote in Alabama during the years when the Klan was killing schoolchildren in church. She had the courage and the skill to write a novel that the MAGA movement shamefully is banning from schools, To Kill a Mockingbird, the story of a white lawyer who defends a black man accused of raping a white woman. The book shaped my own racial attitudes at a young age. I'm forever grateful that my mother insisted that I read it.

There are a great many more people on my list, Joe Hill, Howard Zinn, Mother Jones, Emma Goldman, the Freedom Riders, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, St. Augustine, Oskar Schindler, Pete Seeger, Alan Turing, Jackie Robinson, Barak Obama, the Suffragettes, FDR, Abraham Lincoln, Grandma Gatewood and so many more.

Who is on your list?

The problem of the day for me was finding an extension for Safari to automate opening paywalled websites at the Internet Archive. Unfortunately, the only extension in the App Store that does that is not available in the US. So, I turned to my go-to site for Apple Shortcuts, Routine Hub, to look for a solution there. I wasn't surprised to find one immediately.

I downloaded it and set it up to work with Carlo Zottman's new app, Barcuts, which replaces the default menu bar for Shortcuts with one that is application-specific.

I ran the shortcut on a paywalled article from the New York Times...and nothing happened. So, I went to the Shortcuts app to watch it run step by step to see where it was failing. It turns out that the URL scheme it was using was somehow not associated with Safari on my machine. I had no idea how to fix that, so I went to ChatGPT for help. It suggested an obscure free app from GitHub called SwiftDefaultApps. I was mildly skeptical because it hasn't been updated since 2019, but I tried to anyway. It has 1500 stars. Just a note -  it installs in System Settings rather than into the /Applications folder.

There was no URL scheme listed for the one that was failing in the shortcut, but the app let me create it and associate it with Safari, figuring out how to do that was simple and intuitive. I tested the Shortcut again on the same article and it worked the very first time.

SwiftDefaultApps also lets you see every file association on your Mac and change them. You can also change your default apps for:

• Web browsing
• Email
• FTP
• RSS
• Instant messaging

You can also change the apps associated with Uniform Type Identifiers.

Based on its effectiveness in solving my particular problem and the variety of features it offers, I'm going to leave it installed. If you are one of those folks who gets the vapors over software that wasn't updated last week, it probably isn't for you.

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I’ve climbed this mountain. Whitetop, many times. The first was on my through hike where a band of old hippies gave me and Wonder Woman giant plates of food and laughed at us as we inhaled it while moaning in delight. Washington County, Virginia in the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area. Trump is going to let loggers cut the trees down.

During my working life, my boss in the school IT system, bless his heart, had to counsel me numerous times because I just didn't grasp the concept that different people have different realities. I was a pretty rigid thinker about most things. I'm a big guy with a deep voice, and in those days, I tended to appear pretty serious about most things. First year kindergarten teachers, who, let's face it, have a lot more important things to worry about than how to connect a vintage white iBook to a first generation Smart Board, found me intimidating. They wanted someone to show them, again, how to hook up their laptops, but they were afraid to ask me.

I was pretty offended by this. I took pride in being professional and thorough. I didn't mind going the extra mile to help out my customers. When I told the boss, he assured me that he knew my heart was in the right place, but that (here it comes), "People's perception is their reality." He probably told me that once or twice a week for a decade. It doesn't matter if you're Mother Teresa. If people think you're Margaret Thatcher, they aren't going to want you in their space.

Eventually, I adopted an attitude where my primary concern was making people feel comfortable first, and then solving their tech issues. Any technically competent person can figure out why your machine won't connect to the Internet. Evidently, it takes experiences to turn off airplane mode for you without making you feel stupid. I've probably closed 100 tickets in my life where a person's issue was caused by their computer being unplugged. I never put that in the ticket, though. I always just put "electrical problems." That way they don't feel dumb and no one but me and them know they had to get help for the most basic of issues.

I had to adopt that attitude at work to be successful. I don't have to adopt it in the real world, nor should I. Nor should you. Racists live in a world where their reality is founded in the belief that other racial groups are inferior. That most certainly doesn't make it real. Right-wing Christians think that Jesus loves them although they don't help the poor and immigrants, don't turn the other cheek and most importantly don't treat other people like they want to be treated. I don't have to respect their faith or give them credit for tithing to their all white church that lobbies to take away a woman's right to choose. Finally, I don't have to respect a person's belief that their sexuality gives them more rights than my LGBT friends. I have the right to my own reality, in which people with that attitude are hateful bigots.

I know I am not the arbiter of anyone's reality but my own. I have some odd beliefs, mostly about inconsequential stuff. Although I've consumed copious amounts of coffee, tea, liquor and beer, I don't believe that any of it tastes good without being sweetened. Me and every other person who is a fan of those beverages enjoys them for the drugs they contain, caffeine and ethyl alcohol. If you drink decaf coffee without cream and sugar, you have a mental illness verging on masochism. Hey, like I said, that's my reality. It doesn't have to be yours.

Even our own memories challenge what is real and what is not. When my siblings and I sit down with our Mom to tell stories from the good old days, we frequently have completely unique recollections of when and how things went down in the early 70s. Occasionally the differences are pretty big. We remember things happening in entirely different towns or with different people. Obviously, we aren't living in parallel universes. There is one "real" version of events. It's just that none of us is sure after five decades what the real version is.

Overall, it doesn't matter, I suppose. We have to be true to our ideals. The willingness to be a better person should never leave us, but failing to hold people accountable for bullshit is not an attribute. Remember what St. Augustine said. "Love and do as you will."

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In trying to stay away from proprietary formats, like spreadsheets from Excel or even Numbers, I opt for using comma separated value (CSV) files as often as possible. These files are simply plain text that can be edited and viewed with anything capable of reading plain text. They will never be obsolete as long as computers are in use. Text editors aren't the best tool for working with data in table formats, however. It's difficult to copy, cut and paste columns and rows of data.

Delimited, a CSV editor that adheres to the RFC 4180 standard, by developer Willem Kempers, is a bargain for $3.99 in the Mac App Store. In adherence to the standard, it can also word tab separated values (TSV) as well. You can treat the first row as data or a header. You can add columns and rows and move data by cutting and copying at will. The developer states that it can handle datasets as large as two million rows without choking. The app is written in 100% Swift and follows typical Mac standards. You can customize the toolbar. On all of my Macs, it is the default handler of CSV files.

Delimited is also capable of creating files from scratch, not just editing existing ones. You can get more information at the developer's website.

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OK, what is going on here? Isn’t everyone aging all the time? Are the services getting older or am I? Ans, what’s up with the decrepit building? #Confused

The rear end of The Charging Bull statue in the financial district in New York City. It’s theonly bull the market is going to see for a long time now that the fascists have killed the economy.

If you do much traveling along the East Coast of the United States, it is hard to escape doing some driving on Interstate 95. It runs from the Canadian border with Maine to Miami, a distance of 1924 miles, passing through 15 states and the District of Columbia, more than any other Interstate. The final leg of I-95 wasn't connected until 2018 in New Jersey. 110 million people live in proximity to the highway and it facilitates 40% of the US gross domestic product.

I live about five miles from the closest exit. I'm most familiar with the stretch between central Florida and Washington, DC, although I have traveled as far north as New Jersey on it on a single trip in the 80s. I've also been on short stretches in Maine and the Miami metro area.

If you plan to make your way down it at any point, I suggest getting the excellent iOS app, iExit, which tracks your location and gives you information on all the amenities you need while traveling.

For planning purposes, there is an entire website dedicated to traveling the highway.

I-95 Exit Guide | #1 Road Trip & Planning Guide - This comprehensive website offers information on:

• Real time traffic conditions
• Tolls
• Alternate routes
• Gas prices
• Hotel booking
• Restaurant recommendations
• Construction
• Weather
• Shopping (outlet mallls)

As always, you can take a deep dive on Wikipedia.

• Interstate 95 - Wikipedia
  
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One of the most frustrating situations for me when traveling is being locked out of remote access into my home computer. If my remote access software has some sort of glitch or my whole workstation needs to be restarted, short of calling someone to go to my house and sit at my desk, I have been out of luck. Thanks to a post I saw on Reddit yesterday, those days are behind me now. Using some tools I already have, it is now possible to do any number of remote actions to my remote computer from my phone, traveling laptop or a borrowed computer.

In my use case, the tools I am employing are:

• Dropbox (but any syncing service will work, e.g. iCloud, Google Drive)
• Hazel
• Shortcuts

Step One - Dropbox

Create an empty folder in Dropbox. I called mine "Actions".

Step Two - Hazel

On your home computer, create rules in Hazel that are triggered by a) full name b) matches c) FileName.txt

Then set an action telling Hazel to rename the file so that it doesn't go into a loop.

Finally, set an action that runs an AppleScript or an Apple Shortcut to complete the task you want. ChatGPT can write the AppleScript for you if you just describe what you want to do.

Step 3 - Shortcuts (optional)

You can make shortcuts that will automatically create the files you want in your Actions folder and run them from your iPhone if you want to fully automate the process.

When you are away and you want to perform one of the actions you have set up, all you have to do is create an empty text file in your Actions folder with the name that corresponds to the action. For example, if I create a file called restart.txt, it triggers Hazel to run an AppleScript to reboot my machine.

Ideas

A few of the things you can do remotely are

• Restart your computer
• Log out the current user
• Start any app
• Move or copy files from a non-synced location to a cloud drive

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Wonder Woman enjoying a ride beside the New River in a linear state park in SW Virginia.

I have been using Chrome Remote Desktop when I need to remote into computers in my home when I am away. It's free, requires practically no setup beyond installation, adding a computer names and setting up a password. It works through corporate firewalls and local VPNs with no trouble. The only problem is the compnay who makes it. I am opting out of Google products for email, cloud storage, search, photos, browsing and maps. There is no reasons to use their remote solution when others are available.

The solution I found is the free and open-source Hop To Desk product. It has all the benefits og Chrome Remote Desktop and more.

Features

• Chat
• File transfer
• Works on macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android and ChromeOS
• Can be run from a thumb drive as a portable app
• End to end encryption
• Share screen with remote user or exercise remote control
• Direct IP access, IP whitelisting and SOCKS5 proxy connections are supported
• Does not require network configuration like port forwarding or firewall adjustments
• Connect to unlimited remote computers (Commercial use is OK)
• You may setup your own private HopToDesk network on your servers or existing infrastructure. Self-hosting can also be accomplished with AWS or Cloudflare Workers.
• Use optional web-based dashboard to manage connections and generate share links

I was able to set up my home network of Mac, iOS and Linux devices in about 15 minutes. The macOS version requires screen recording and accessibility permissions.

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Getting a state job in 1986 ended a few of the common problems I'd experienced as a member of the Working Poor™️. The biggest one was finally having health insurance. Except for military doctors, I hadn't gotten health care since I was a teenager. My birth of my two children, like roughly half the kids in the US, was paid for by Medicaid. After that ran out, we were on our own. I also became eligible for paid sick and vacation leave, an absolute luxury. Few hourly jobs in my region offered such benefits, at least among those who worked in the trades. If rain or snow canceled a day's work, a day's pay was also canceled.

One thing working for the state didn't alleviate was low wages. In 1986 as a married man with two children, I barely made $15K. There's a long list of issues that come with not making much money. Not being able to save meant that any unexpected expense had the potential to become a catastrophe. For years, I owned a succession of high-mileage, low-end, thousand-dollar cars. Any attempt at taking a long trip was always a gamble. I owned cars where the windows wouldn't work and a car that burned two quarts of oil every day. I was well into my thirties before I ever bought four new tires at one time. I bought a great many used ones for $25 apiece, though.

These days, I like to look back on my decision not to have cable television during my kid's formative years as a moral choice to keep their minds from becoming polluted, but the reality is, I just could not afford it. I was more fortunate than many, since my mom had herself graduated from Working Poor™️ status into the professional ranks. An extreme generous soul, she bought lots of school clothes and shoes for my kids through the years.

Even after a miracle happened, and we were able to get a mortgage on a home, I quickly learned about the challenges that posed when my water heater died. There was no landlord to call to get it fixed. I was lucky enough to pick up a couple of timely computer-side jobs to pay for a replacement, or else we'd have all been taking cold showers for a while. I'm not too proud to admit that I even had to borrow money from my high school-aged son, who worked a fast food job until the next payday when our refrigerator died unexpectedly.

I finally escaped that cycle through longevity and promotions at work. Of course, marrying Wonder Woman who makes pretty good dough, was also a big factor. She's a CPA, and ever since we got married I've just turned my paycheck over to her, and like magic, the bills get paid, my debit card never gets rejected and the holidays aren't a ball of financial stress. It's magic, I tell you.

My personal experience informs my feelings for the people who are still members of the Working Poortm™️. I saw the teacher's assistants, custodians, and cafeteria workers from my public school paying the same amount for their family health insurance as the highest compensated administrators. I've been to plenty of restaurants in the summer where my waitress was a schoolteacher working a second job. I've had the same experience at the grocery store, watching a high school business teacher ring up my groceries. I've seen the legislature go years without raising teacher pay, cutting benefits, and taking away paid incentives for graduate degrees. All this happens because we have a state law forbidding collective bargaining for public employees.

You'll notice that I haven't even touched on the criminal refusal of the ruling class to raise the wages of our lowest paid workers at the same time they created the economic system that foisted Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg on us.

No warfare but class warfare. Workers of the world, unite.

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One of two state aquariums in North Carolina.

I've been keeping a journal of some sort consistently for many years. My motivations aren't that complex. I like journaling because it gives me something to do. To me, the act of organizing and recording my thoughts is just an enjoyable activity in its own right. I also enjoy looking back at past entries quite a bit. It's fun to see what I did on trips with Wonder Woman in years past or to see photos from family get togethers. Since I started blogging, much of what I once wrote just for myself now gets shared with the Internet.

Here are a few tips based on my experience and some links from others to help you get started:

• You can keep a digital and a handwritten journal at the same time. There are proven benefits from writing things out by hand to reinforce them in your brain. Get a box of nice pens and a stack of composition books and put them somewhere easy to find. Make some goals and write about them each morning while you have your coffee. I did this daily during the most productive year I ever had
• Use Day One - a journaling app available on many platforms. It is one of the most well designed and useful apps I have ever encountered. Since January 2014, I've used it lmost every day. Day One Is Popular for a Reason | AppAddict
• Use Obsidian - Obsidian is an extensible app with over 2000 available plugins. If you are a data junkie like me, You can automate all kinds of data into it's daily note feature. My Daily Note in Obsidian - Byte Sized Chunks for Customizing Every Element, Plugin Recommendations and Links

• Discover 8 Journaling Techniques for Better Mental Health | Psychology Today - Ever wondered how you should journal? Learn eight ways that you can use journaling to reduce stress, increase self-reflection, and create a better sense of wellbeing.
• 10 Types of Journaling for Peace of Mind | Skillshare Blog - Journaling can be a powerful tool for self-care, but it also can be tough to sit down and write about your thoughts. The good news? There are so many ways you can put pen to paper. So, if you’ve ever thought that it just isn’t your thing, read on to learn about the different types of journaling to see if one speaks to you. (Or, if you’re already an avid journaler, see if there’s a new tool you can add to your practice!)
• How to Journal: 5 Pro Tips and 40 Prompts to Get You Started - Remember, journaling is supposed to benefit you. Don’t stick with a method because others you know enjoy that approach or because you feel like you “should.”
  
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Here are a few small apps I found this week from my usual sources and tips from Internet friends:

Sentinel - from indy dev, Alin Lupascu, the guy behind the popular uninstall utility, Pearcleaner, Sentinel has a couple of Gatekeeper related functions:

• Removes app from quarantine
• Self-signs apps

iCloud for Linux- If you occasionally use Linux, perhaps to get some life from an older Mac or just as a learning experience, and you want to access your iCloud data - well there in an app for that.

Substage - This app uses AI to generate command line commands to do things like convert documents, images and videos, get word counts in your current document, move and compress files, perform commits and pushes on GitHub, do calculations and more. It has a two week free trial, then subscription or lifetime purchase options using various commercial or local LLMs.

The SeaMonkey Project - If you are an old who remembers the days when Firefox came as an all in one application suite, with a browser, email, chat and web creation tools, you may be pleasently surprised that the concept lives on in this project. I created my first websites back in the 90s using this kind of suite.

Macs Fan Control - I have a 2019 Intel MacBook Pro used as a server in my living room and it occasionally drives me nuts with fan noise issues caused by my decision to replace the HDD. This app lets me create presets and control the fans as I like. There is a free and a pro version costing $14.95.

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Celebrities are monetizing spirituality with the most popular app on the iPhone - Hallow - The thing about meditation is that it's totally pointless unless you can somehow monetize it. /s

As AI Takes His Readers, A Leading History Publisher Wonders What’s Next - His World History Encyclopedia — the world's second most visited history website — showed up in Google's AI Overviews, synthesized and presented alongside other history sites. Then, its traffic cratered, dropping 25% in November.

Why I recommend against Brave - Haha, did you think the Brave browser's only problem was the bad politics of the CEO? Think again. There's a long, historical list of sins and missteps.

20 Key iPhone Settings to Change | WIRED - Apple's software design strives to be intuitive, but each iteration of iOS contains so many additions and tweaks that it's easy to miss some useful iPhone settings

These iPhone Accessories Are a Total Waste of Money - Your iPhone is a premium device, but not every accessory marketed for it is worth the price. Some, as you'll soon see, are pure gimmicks that prey on fears and misinformation.

Posts online correctly cracked the formula for Trump's tariffs | Snopes.com MAGAts lie about almost everything, including easily disproven economics fallacies

Allison Riggs: This Is a Fight for the Very Soul of Democracy - Democracy Docket - In my home state of NC, a Republican who lost by 65,000 votes in November 2024 is coming close to succeeding in reversing his defeat by appealing to Republican dominated courts full of his donors and supporters.

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One year ago I posted my first app review on AppAddict. I'd recently subscribed to a new blogging service and I was trying to figure out what to write. I figured that my love of downloading and testing new software was something worth sharing. Besides, I was trying to figure out DNS for websites and using different domains and subdomains with different providers. The first review was about Rond Life Mapper, an iOS app for recording your GPS coordinates as you go through your day. Since then, I've posted 370 times. App Addict has been quoted in Lifehacker, The Verge and in newsletters like The Hiro Report and Labnotes. The moderators of r/MacApps on Reddit helped me out a bit by adding a link in the sidebar to the blog.

Halfway through the year, I purchased a new domain and moved all the content to it. I started a news letter a couple of months ago and I  continue to hear from folks who subscribe via RSS. The blog is still not monetized. I've never run a single ad nor have I ever charged for content. I don't have any plans to change that. I love hearing from developers with new apps they want me to try. I also feel flattered that the people behind some of my favorite Apps like Popclip and Default Folder X have contacted me to express gratitude after I gushed about them in a blog posts.

I've worked out a system for finding news apps. I have a long list of prospective candidates bookmarked and a collection of web pages I check regularly for newly announced titles or updates. I am thankful for the great Mac community, free speech and the IndieWeb scene. I'm glad a subscribed to SetApp so I could discover a long list of great titles to adapt into my workflow. Thanks for reading. I hope to be here for another anniversary next year.

The other newsletter is for this blog, one app review delivered to your mailbox every day. in case you don't have enough software in your life - Subscribe | AppAddict Newsletter

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Lake Mattamuskeet, Dare County, NC, one of the world’s premier spots for spotting waterfowl.

Early evening, April four
Shot rings out in the Memphis sky
Free at last, they took your life
They could not take your pride
Pride, In the Name of Love - U2

Shortly after 6:00 PM on this date in 1968, the bullets of an assassin took the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the only American born in the 20th century honored with a national holiday. At the time of his death, King was one of the most unpopular men in the United States. He's probably received more death threats than anyone involved in the Civil Rights movement. Many people believe that he foresaw his own death.

King was in Memphis that day in support of striking sanitation workers. He was stridently anti-capitalist, dedicated to a world where wealth wasn't relegated to a tiny minority while working people lived in poverty. In his speech the night before his murder, King's prophetic words are chilling:

Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop.

And I don't mind.

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!

I was only three years old when Dr. King died, so I have no memory of him. I do remember the struggle to get his birthday made into a holiday. Some Southern states insist on co-honoring Robert. E Lee on the same day because, well, some southern states are run by racist assholes, kind of like out whole country is now.

Later on the evening of April 4th, Robert Kennedy, Sr., gave a speech in Indianapolis that he led off by annoucing King's murder, eliciting screams of rage and pain from those in the audience. He spoke for the first time in public about the murder of his brother in Dallas five years prior. Then he uttered the words that were to be engraved on his memorial, for he too was to die by an assassins bullets just a couple of months later.

"What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice towards those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black."

Every honest person in the US knows that we still haven't gotten to the promised land. We still have the same division that Kennedy spoke about. Despite the fascist victory last November, the dream isn't dead, though. We still have the time and the means to make it come true. It's going to take hard work and courage. Will you help?

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There are plenty of apps and websites that allow you to download vast quantities of information as single comma separated value (CSV) files. You can get

• Your entire Netflix viewing history
• All your Letterboxd reviews
• Books you entered in Goodreads
• Purchase histories from various vendors
• Your passwords and more.

The problem with big flat files like that is that they are not designed for reading. Most people view them in spreadsheet programs like Excel or Numbers.

There is a free repository on GitHub with everything you need to convert CSV files into individual Markdown notes to use in apps like:

• Obsidian
• Bear
• Logseq

The easiest way to keep this up to date is by downloading GitHub Desktop for Mac.. This app lets you easily create and upload your own repositories and download ones that other have posted. Using Github is a free way to share files for other users to download, even if you are not a developer. I have a repository where I share my quotes collection as Markdown files and another one where I share my settings for Mac automation apps like Keyboard Maestro, Better Touch Tool and Hazel.

Once you download the repository, using it is simple. Make sure you have installed Python. The latest version is 3.12. Move your CSV file into the folder with the scripts in it and run the command from the terminal of your choice. I've been using Ghostty lately. The script will begin to run a wizard that asks you which field to use to name your Markdown notes. Then it asks you if you want the information in the YAML front matter or in the body of the not, or both, After that it asks you how you want each column of the CSV file to be formatted (e.g, as is, as text, as formatted text, as links etc.) After you complete the wizard, it instantly creates a data folder within the folder you've been working in with all the Markdown notes. It will create 500 or more notes in just a second or two. It's amazing.

Obviously, you'll want to remove any columns you don't want from your CSV files before using the script. If, after creating the notes, you want to make batch edits via search and replace or be deleting elements, an app like BBEdit or VSCode can do that for you across all the files in your folder.

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I've written before about my enjoyment of regional dishes. . Close behind that is my enjoyment of iconic regional chains. I'll grant you that they rarely serve haute cuisine but I don't care. Fast food is popular because it's usually reasonably palatable and consistent. Often, I just want some food, not a dining experience.

If you're ever in my neck of the woods (North Carolina), two places you definitely need to check out are:

• Cook Out - home cooked, hand patted burgers. Get it Cook Out style with slaw, chili, mustard and onions
• Smithfield's Chicken and Barbecue - Pork barbecue served with vinegar based sauce, southern fried chicken, banana pudding and copious amounts of sweet iced tea

When visiting Texas, a couple of can't miss chains are:

• Whataburger - a solid choice for a burger
• Buc-ees - You need to experience a Buc-ees to understand it. They are gigantic interstate rest emporiums that not only sell food, they also have over a 100 gas pumps and a whole crew of people just to sell beef jerky

California

• Menu - In-N-Out Burger

Midwest

• Culver's Restaurant | Frozen Custard, Butterburgers & Cheese Curds

Miami

• Pollo Tropical

I'd love to know what's iconic where you live. You never know where I could go.

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I brought this tree home from my grandparents old house when it was a couple of feet tall in 1996. Today it’s taller than my roof and shades my front porch. It reminds me of them whenever I see it.

Wonder Woman and I are taking two of our high-schools aged grandsons on a road trip to Gainesville, Florida on Friday. We are going so that Connor, the 17-year-old, can participate in a charity bike ride for Friedreich's Ataxia, the degenerative nueromuscular illness he lives with. It's one of the few times a year he gets to be around other FA folks. It does him good to see people who have made it to adulthood, living successfully with disease. He was provided with a recumbent bicycle for participating in a clinical study and he is able to pedal it on the four-mile closed course with his Nana running along beside him.

Aiden, his younger brother is coming along to ride his bike in the event too. Even though he and Connor bickered literally all the time, he's always there to steady him when he walks or to help him with his wheelchair if it's one of those days. They are typical teenage boys who speak with great authority on video game culture, anime, fast food deals and the most influential people on YouTube and TikTok. I learn a lot from them.

They aren't thrilled about getting up early for the drive but it's worth it for the carte blanch Wonder Woman gives them to load up on gas station goodies and the freedom to pick out where we eat along the way. They even like hotel breakfasts.

Connor is a fiend for Mac and Cheese. He loves the way they make it at The Cheesecake Factory, so I know we will be going there on one of the nights. He's a kind and sweet kid who constantly asks me if I'm OK. I'm not sure what kind of issues he suspects I might be having, but it always seems important to him that I'm comfortable and happy.

I'm not sure how much they'll communicate with their parents while they're gone. It's not that they will have separation anxiety. The boys just love their folks. They like to keep them informed of what they're up to. Plus, they have a little sister who was a bonus baby. She's in kindergarten. Aiden is her best friend. She'll miss him a lot. Their older brother started college this year. They alternately miss him and celebrate the extra room they have in his absence.

I'm looking forward to spending time with them. They make me laugh and feel young and woefully out of touch with pop culture. I love watching Wonder Woman shine when she's with them. She's really good at being their Nana.

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1 1/2 lbs pork shoulder
2 garlic cloves, peeled
1 tablespoon cumin powder
2 onions, chopped separated
4 garlic cloves, chopped and separated
2 tablespoons oil
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon cayenne
2 tablespoons annato powder
1 tablespoon salt
1/4 teaspoon oregano
4 cups canned white hominy, drained and rinsed
3-5 cups pork broth, from cooking pork shoulder
salt
2 whole fresh jalapenos, chopped (optional)

This recipe requires a simple prep.

Prepare by the onion, peel the garlic, chop the onion, peel and chop the 2 garlic cloves,

Place the meat in a large saucepan and just cover with lightly salted water.

Add one onion, 2 cloves peeled garlic, pepper, cumin, and oregano.

Bring to a boil over medium heat, skim off any foam that rises, reduce heat, cover and simmer for 45 minutes.

Saute the second chopped onion and garlic in oil until translucent.

Add the remaining spices, stir for a minute.

Stir in the canned hominy, pork broth (if there is not enough pork broth, add chicken stock, I like to add it anyway for flavor, about 2-4 cups, eyeball the amount you like), and jalapenos

Cook at a simmer, covered, for 45 to 60 minutes until the meat and hominy are tender.

If necessary, cook for up to an additional 60 minutes until the chilies and onions are well blended into the broth

Degrease the stew, taste for salt, and serve in soup bowls.

Garnishes that are always served with are:
lots of lime/lemon wedges.
sliced radishes.
chopped cilantro.
Shredded cabbage(not red).
fresh packaged fried corn tortillas.

Charleston, SC is a charming city and one of my favorite places to visit.

This is my entry in the April IndieWeb Carnival hosted by Jamie Thiglestad on Renewal.

One of the things I miss about working in public schools is the comfortable rhythm of the annual cycle. Unlike teachers and junior administrators, i worked twelve months of the year, not ten months like most of them. I wasn't jealous of them, not exactly. I loved the summer months when the giant high schools were mostly empty. The county adjusted our work schedule so we could have Friday's off. Some summers were non-stop projects on big technology renewals. There were others when it was tough to find things to do.

When August rolled around, and a new school year was about to kick off, it was the beginning of the cycle of life for a gigantic educational machine. I enjoyed seeing the first year teachers, regardless of whether they were young college graduates or second career types. What I really liked was seeing the paraprofessionals who sent to school and finally became teachers themselves. My district hired many teachers from northern states where it's challenging to get a job because the vacancies are few. Down here in the dirty south, where we don't have teacher's unions, it's a struggle to find qualified people.

At the high schools, before classes even start, the athletes show up on campus for fall sports. I can still hear the chants of practicing cheerleaders echoing through the empty halls. I can see another cohort of football players trying to survive another August afternoon practice, with the humidity above 90% and the temperatures near 100 degrees. I'm just so glad that these days, coaches know enough to let the players drink water. In my day and before, we were denied water for fear that it would cause cramps. In the middle of a three-hour August practice they'd give us a small handful of ice chips. That was it. Crazy, huh?

When the first day of school rolled around, I'd always try to be at a primary school to watch the spectacle of sobbing parents dropping off little Tommy and little Susie for the beginning of kindergarten. The veteran teachers were excellent at taking the kids and getting rid of the overly dramatic parents like a border collie herding sheep. Occasionally they'd even have to get the school resource officer to ask parents to leave because they were having such severe separation anxiety.

In the upper grades, I'd pay attention to what the kids were wearing and all the new haircuts and hairstyles. Almost everyone is nervous at the beginning of the year, except those veteran teachers. A new school year always meant a lot of work for me. Problems that went unreported the previous spring would pop up as emergencies. Some things, power cords for example, would always mysteriously disappear over the summer. Laptops that worked fine in May would be non-functional in September. It would normally take until about the first of October to get everything working at peak efficiency.

I worked in a county with 26 schools. Every one of them had its culture. Some had tremendous community involvement, while others would have trouble getting parents to come to open house. I learned which lunchroom ladies took the job of making tasty food seriously, and which lunchrooms to avoid at all costs. Things would evolve, though. People would retire or move on, and their replacements could make things better or worse. I've seen faculties devastated by the transfer of a beloved principal. I've seen the opposite effect when an unpopular administrator finally moved on.

Every month was predictable. Holiday breaks and exams came and went. Different sports seasons had their peculiarities. The growing sense of excitement in the spring as summer approached always felt nice. Watching another senior class get ready to move out into the world was sobering. I saw kids go all the way through their K-12 education, leave, go to college and come back as teachers. Like I said, it's a cycle and every new year is the renewal of that cycle.

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I'd stayed away from TeraCopy for Mac for a long time because it didn't have good reviews. It was updated for Apple Silicon earlier this year, so I decided to try it out. I have some huge folders with tens of thousands of images and audio files that I need to copy to and from external drives and computers. I easily set up a job on a 2019 MacBook Pro to copy 135GB from an external mechanical hard drive to the internal SSD over a thunderbolt port. It took about 30 minutes and I was able to use the functionality of TeraCopy to verify the integrity of the files.

Features

• During transfers, any problematic files will be tagged and skipped without aborting the whole process. After the transfer is complete, you can retry only the skipped files.
• You can proactively handle any file naming conflicts that occur during transfer by selecting the "skip all" function. After copying you can generate a report of the transfer, generate checksum files and run scripts automatically.
• Integrates with MacOS by preselecting as source and target the folders you have open in Finder. TeraCopy can copy files to a folder opened in Finder with Cmd + Alt + V shortcut.
• TeraCopy preserves the original date and time of your files.
• The pro version can save file lists with all related information as HTML and CSV files.
• The pro version allows you to omit certain file types and folders when copying which is great if you want to copy just the photographs and not the videos from Apple's live photos.

You can get TeraCopy on the Mac App Store.

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There are many reasons sharing files between computers for even the most basic of home users:

• Backup
• Moving documents to a computer connected to a local printer
• Information shared between your and your partner or spouse
• Installation files for programs you want on more than one computer
• Consolidating a family photos album
• Moving downloaded movies or music to your home media server

I got an email from a friend today who explained to me that he's used a particular method to create a folder on his parent's computer into which they can drop their various tax documents as they receive them so that he can access them all when it comes time to fill out the forms. For them. I just set up a method of file sharing to copy nothing but downloaded video files from my laptop to my iPad in preparation for traveling when I need something to watch.

Here are a variety of ways to share files, both temporarily and continuously connected.

Blip - this app transfers individual files between two devices no matter where they are located using end to end encryption. Files can be as larger as 2 GB. It works on Macs, iOS and Windows devices. Free. Blip - Free Cross Platform File Transfers | AppAddict

Local Send - this works like Blip but is limited to devices that are on the same network, like your home Wi-Fi, or between you and your partner in a hotel. It works on Mac and iOS. https://appaddict.app/post/local-send-easy-to-set-up-and-easy-to-use

Native File Sharing - File sharing has been baked into Macs since the first version of OS X. Most experienced users can set it up easily enough. Set up file sharing on Mac - Apple Support

Cloud Services - If you use iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive or a similar service, sharing is built in, whether the recipient has the service or not. You can generate links. In a case where you want to share between two computers that you own, you can install the client or sign into the same account in the case of iCloud on each of your computers. There are Windows and iOS clients for most services.

Nord VPN Meshnet - If you use Nord as your VPN, you can use Meshnet. Meshnet is a way to safely access other devices, no matter where in the world they are. Once set up, Meshnet functions just like a secure local area network (LAN) — it connects devices directly. This makes Meshnet a great fit for activities that require high speed, low latency, and advanced security — activities like file sharing, active work collaborations, and intense multiplayer gaming. - Meshnet explained | Meshnet docs

Syncthing - You can set this up between any two devices and automatically and securely keep an entire directory of files securely shared. Syncthing - Free and Open-Source Cross Platform File Sharing | AppAddict

Email - You can just about always use the modern equivalent of Sneaker Net, like a caveman and just email files in a pinch. it's the the fastest or the most secure or the most efficient method, but it will do in a pinch.

To tie these different methods together, a good file manager comes in handy. If you want to upgrade Finder on your Mac, my recommendation is Qspace. Qspace

For file management on an iOS device, you can't go wrong with FileBrowser Pro. - FileBrowser Pro - For File Intensive Network Connected Workflows | AppAddict

No wonder Van Gogh painted these. Aren’t they beautiful?

I first heard about the free and open-source file syncing app, Syncthing, when I started using Obsidian and may people were suggesting it as the back end of their DIY vault syncing strategy. I ended up using another method for Obsidian, but larley I have been exploring numerous ways to share files in my home lab setup, which features Macs, iOS devices an Ubuntu Linux box and VMs of all different sorts, including Windows.

The aptly named Syncthing Foundation is behind the app that they describe thusly

Syncthing is a continuous file synchronization program. It synchronizes files between two or more computers in real time, safely protected from prying eyes. Your data is your data alone and you deserve to choose where it is stored, whether it is shared with some third party, and how it’s transmitted over the internet.

Syncthing is private and secure.

• Private - no central server. Your data is only on your machines
• Encrypted - secured using TLS
• Authenticated - every device is identified by a strong cryptographic certificate.

Open

• Open Protocol - Adheres to a documented specification
• Open Source - All code is available in GitHub
• Open Development - When bugs happen, they are dealt with and not hidden
• Open Discourse - In the Syncthing Forum

Easy to Use

• Powerful - Sync unlimited folders with different people or just between your won devices
• Portable - Administered through a web browser
• Simple - "Syncthing doesn’t need IP addresses or advanced configuration: it just works, over LAN and over the Internet. Every machine is identified by an ID. Give your ID to your friends, share a folder and watch: UPnP will do if you don’t want to port forward or you don’t know how."

My first use case with Synthing is going to be loading downloaded videos from my Mac onto my iPad for use when traveling. I'll let you know how it goes.

Download Syncthing here.

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“A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” ― Joseph Stalin

During the pandemic, while half of America was arguing that COVID-19 was no worse than the flu, the city government of New York was hiring refrigerated trucks to keep bodies in because they ran out of space in their morgues. I've known may people who've been sick with COVID-19, but only one who died from the illness, a man I'd known since childhood. He was a retired judge, the father of a childhood friend and the wife of my former boss. While Wonder Woman and I were hiking the Appalachian Trail, he and his wife picked us up and took us to their Western North Carolina vacation home for a couple of meals and a shower. The next day they hiked with us almost to the Tennessee line. His fight with COVID-19 was short, One day he was joking with his family about not being able to talk and the next day he was gone. Forever.

My personal encounters with death have been just that, personal. I cam home from school one day in the ninth grade to find out that the matriarch of the farm I lived on had dies during the previous night. As a result, my entire family had to move to the home of my aunt's father. It was on the same farm, only 50 yards or so from where we lived.

During my school years, my class was lucky. We didn't lose anyone in the way that I witnessed numerous cohorts lose members during me educational career. As soon as we graduated, though, the toll started to mount. Within a year or two, car crashes claimed lives. A fiery plance crash in Gander, Newfoundland with nearly 300 members of the 101st Airborne Division aboard claimed the life of the trainer from my high school football team along with everyone else on board. Cases of cancer and sudden heart attacks took some of the star athletes we had as well.

My father talked about death often. Having spent two years in Vietnam, he'd witnessed too much of it. His generation died in that war in the tens of thousands. Additionally, since he was a pilot, he knew too many other pilots who had died in accidents at the hands of flight students or just by stupid bad luck when their helicopters hit unmarked power wires.

Even those of us who are not wrapped up in celebrity culture can still be affected by the deaths of famous people we never knew. I remember the August morning when my mother told my brother and me that Elvis Presley had died during the night. It seemed like that was a big deal for a long time, especially to the hucksters on television selling tribute albums and all the people who wrote books about The King. I remember when presidents Truman and Johnson died, pretty close together. Then it was Pope Paul VI and a month later his successor, John Paul !. I learned more about Catholicism during that period than I had ever know, mostly because there are so few Catholics in the small southern towns where I grew up.

John Lennon's senseless murder also impacted me. It seemed like so much of the 60s culture was gone before I could grow old enough to appreciate it with so many influential musicians dying young Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Keith Moon, John Bonham and more.

All of my grandparents survived until I reached adulthood. I was 40 when the last one passed away. The fact that my children got to know them is a source of great joy to me. Now that my oldest grandson is entering his 20s, I have hopes that my Dad will live to be a great-great-grandfather.

Some deaths are seemingly impossible to recover from. My youngest daughter isn't my biological child, but she is mine nonetheless. Her mother and I were married for 18 years. Four years after we separated, she died of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. My daughter has struggled with it ever since. Today is the anniversary of the death of the father of my two step-daughters, who passed away only a year after his marriage to their mother ended. It was a tragedy and one that is still painful for them.

I try not to think about my own remaining years too much, or those of my parents and senior relatives. Yes, I know it is inevitable, but there is little I can do to prepare for it, and I'd rather just deal with it all when the time comes. It's a beautiful day in my corner of the world today, and I think I'll go outside and enjoy it for a while.

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One of the largest races in the world is the annual Bridge Run in Charleston, SC

Probably the most influential time in my life were the years I lived on my uncle's farm, roughly 1979-1983. Although both of my parents were the children of farmers, I didn't have much exposure to agriculture before a fateful Easter vacation I spent with my uncle at an industrial pig farm he was managing. I was in the eighth grade, years away from being able to drive on the road. On the first day of vacation, he showed my brother and me how to operate his 1976 Ford Ranger pickup on the dirt roads of the farm. We also got to use a pressure watcher and assist in all kinds of chores, including a day in the breeding barn.

The following fall, I decided it would be a good idea to use my saved up lunch money to buy my very first joint. I couldn't wait until after school to smoke it, so I went out on the playground, in full view of an entire wing of classrooms, where all of my matches were blown out by the wind. Dejected, with no buzz, I went back into the school building, where I was immediately accosted by a teacher who'd seen me out her classroom window. To make a long story short, the school took a dime view of marijuana possession. The next thing I knew, I was on my way to a new life in a new town where they might let me go to school. That's how I ended up living and working on a farm.

My aunt and uncle treated me and still treat me like one of their sons. Their capacity for love seems limitless. Since I had a knack for getting into stupid amounts of trouble, my uncle decided to keep me too busy to get into mischief. If I weren't busy, I'd be too exhausted. It worked after a few spectacular missteps on my part. By the time I left that farm, everything else other people considered hard work seemed easy to me.

Now, I'm going to get to my point. The one thing I was bitter about in those days was a lack of praise. The old man just didn't believe in handing it out except in small amounts and on very rare occasions. I could spend an entire Saturday splitting multiple cords of firewood—some of the hardest work I've ever done, and he couldn't be bothered to acknowledge it. It drove me nuts. I respected (and feared) him too much to complain much, but every once in a while, I would say something. His standard answer was, "Do you want me to pat you on the back for getting out of bed?"

These days, he's very much a different man when it comes to handing out compliments. He makes it clear in no uncertain terms that he is proud of me, proud of my kids, proud of Wonder Woman. He even brags about teenage me and the things I did way back then.

As a result of my feelings of being unappreciated back in the day, I resolved early on to make it my life mission to hand out props whenever and wherever I could. In the years I worked in public schools, if I saw a teacher doing a good job, I'd tell them how awesome I thought they were. I'd tell the custodians, secretaries, nurses, and lunch ladies the same thing. My children have never doubted that their dad thinks they are superstars. I don't do it insincerely or to be flattering. I just think it is a nice thing to do for people in a world that can often seem cruel and uncaring.

I even hand out real compliments on the Internet to people who have been friendly and helpful. I know how good it feels to get that kind of feedback, even from faceless Internet strangers. That's why I am out here, just waiting for you to do something cool so I can let you know how much I liked it.

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I'm going to turn the tables today. Instead of giving YOU information on software, I'm going to ask you to give me some recommendations. Specifically, I am looking for a photos app. Since I am eliminating Google and Amazon from my online life, I won't have access to their photo management tools, which, I will admit are pretty good, considering that both companies will mine every bit of data they can from my images in an attempt to extract money from me for their billionaire owners.

Here are the features I'd like to have:

1. Facial recognition to be able to identify people in photos and to be able to group photos of the same person together
2. Object search (e.g., dogs, landscapes, babies etc)
3. Being able to search by dates is a must
4. Tagging
5. Smart folders/albums
6. The ability to use photos in my file system without the need to enter them into a proprietary system like Apple Photos Library
7. The ability to at least read EXIF data and ideally to be able to (batch) edit it.
8. A free trial or money back guarantee
9. A companion iOS or iPadOS app would be awesome.

Potential Apps

So far, these have been suggested to me, but not buy anyone who actually has any experience with them:

• digiKam
• Excire Foto
• Mylio Photos
• Peakto
• ACDSee Photo Studio for Mac

If you know of or use a photo viewer or management program with all or most of these features, please use one of the contact methods at the bottom of the page to let me know. I appreciate it! Thanks for reading App addict!

I have a couple of newsletters now. One is a weekly collection from my personal and links blogs that goes out on Mondays. - ✏️ Subscribe | Amerpie by Lou Plummer

The other newsletter is for this blog, one app review delivered to your mailbox every day. in case you don't have enough software in your life - Subscribe | AppAddict Newsletter

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One of the fat ass squirrels from my backyard. I tried feeding them directly in an effort to get them to stop robbing my bird feeders but the greedy little bastards just laughed at me.

If you ever visit western North Carolina, it’s worth getting up early to catch views like this.

I'm lucky. All four of my grandparents lived into my adulthood. They were each wonderful people in their own way and each had a tremendous influence and helped me become the person I am today. I loved them all obviously and rarely does a day go by when I don't think of them in some way. My parents were teenagers when I was born, as was I when my kids came along. Mom and Dad were only 36 when they got into the grandparent game. Thankfully, my kids gave me a little more breathing room, but I've still been at it for twenty years now.

Meet My Grandkids

My personal advice to grandparents is to have as many adventures with your grandkids as you can. If circumstances permit it, give them the gift of your time. Take them camping, to fall carnivals and Polar Express Train Rides. Take them to see new Disney Movies. Remember their birthdays. Create some rituals. My kids know that every car trip with Wonder Woman and I involves a stop at the store for a snack and a drink. They know when they come to our house that we will have their favorite treats. We have always had a toybox in our house too.

Here are some more suggestions from around the internet.

10 Tips for How to Rock as a Brand-New Grandparent

Grandparenting Tips: How to be a Better Grandparent

How Can I Be A Fun Grandparent? 16 Tips For Grandparents – Retirement Tips and Tricks

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I was directly involved in supporting education in a K-12 environment for a couple of decades and the in higher ed, at the university level, for a few more. My customers were the people who conveyed knowledge and, indirectly, to their students. I listened to plenty of enthusiastic teachers talk about teaching strategies, from the ones who were helping first-graders learn to read all the way through to physicians teaching medical students. Obviously, these instructors understood the importance of learning — for other people, but seldom for themselves, unfortunately.

Since the 90s, when technology started to become ubiquitous in the workplace and computer literacy became necessary in most professional level jobs, there have obviously been many changes. Just the way we store data has evolved from different sized floppy disks, to Zip Drives, writable CD-ROMS, larger hard drives, USB thumb drives to the cloud storage most people use today. Installing software went from typing esoteric commands into a terminal to merely clicking a single button in and app store. Yay for progress!

The problem is that the changes in the technology come too rapidly for many. It seems that there's a certain class of people who wake up one day and just decide they are done learning new things. They are just over it. It's like their brain is full and there is no room for any new information. I've been to countless meetings where I've listened to bosses agonize about how to implement something new while fooling end users into thinking nothing has changed. Bosses get to be bosses numerous times because they are people pleasers, and making people mad goes against the official boss code of conduct. When Microsoft decided to move the Start button from the lower-left side of the screen where it had happily rested since 1995, to the middle of the taskbar, there were millions of IT departments Googling "HOW TO MAKE WINDOWS 11 LOOK LIKE WINDOWS 10."

Doing something as simple as changing the naming scheme for network printers caused numerous professors, supposedly highly educated people, to lose their minds at my former job. They acted like the IT department had a meeting to see what we could do to make their jobs harder. In the early 2000s, Apple moved the power button from the right side of the original iMac to the front of the next generation of educational computers, the eMac. People freaked out about that too.

It's funny. When people go buy a fancy new car or the latest big screen television, they seem to have no problem learning the ins and outs of that tech. Some of that equipment can be pretty complicated, too. Those same people, however, are the same ones who can't seem to remember which password to use in the correct situation to effectively do the job their employer pays them for. Hell, there are more people than you probably want to know about who simply cannot create a password to save their lives following modern conventions. I've wasted hours of my life that I will never get back waiting for people to think of a usable password. Often, I would just have to step in and do it for them after they failed numerous times.

Huge numbers of people never read another book after they finish their formal education. Being entertained becomes the official purpose of life. That's why I get such a crush on anyone I see reading a classic novel or taking a night class at the community college just for the joy of learning a new skill or hobby. I have a long list of things I am interested in learning now that I have leisure time.

Thanks for reading. I'm sorry I missed a couple of days this week. Life gets busy.

I have a couple of newsletters now. One is a weekly collection from my personal and links blogs that goes out on Mondays. - ✏️ Subscribe | Amerpie by Lou Plummer

The other newsletter is for my tech blog, one app review delivered to your mailbox every day, in case you don't have enough software in your life - Subscribe | AppAddict Newsletter

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A global keyboard shortcut is a combination of keys you can press while in any application on your Mac to execute an action belonging to a background process. I typically have a half dozen or more apps running in the background that use glocal keyboard shortcuts. Some of these include:

Keyboard Maestro

Keyboard Maestro is an automation app that allows you to initiate or control just about any repetitive process. Don't let the name fool you though. Keyboard Maestro can execute actions based on two dozen triggers, not just keyboard combinations. Some of the actions I launch with the keyboard from Keyboard Maestro include typing in extra long passwords with a shortcut, launching apps using keyboard combinations, launching a shortcut that queries OpenAI using my API key, activating templates in Drafts, running AppleScripts and more.

My Top 10 Keyboard Maestro Macros

Raycast

Raycast is a keyboard app launcher with over 1000 available plugins, including an emoji picker, window manager, clipboard history manager, notes, passwords and many more. You can assign hotekys to any action. Some of the ones I use most frequently are searching Kagi, generating alt-text for images I post on the Internet, opening my downloads folder, searching social media sites, searching Reddit, searching YouTube, sending clipboard text to Drafts and Obsidian.

My 10 Favorite Raycast Use Cases (and all the apps it replaced) | Amerpie by Lou Plummer

Things 3

Things 3 is a task manager with clients for macOS, iOS and iPadOS. It has two built in global keyboard shortcuts: 1) The Quick Entry window lets you enter new to-dos into Things from anywhere without having to switch applications. Use the keyboard shortcut to make the window appear. 2) With Autofill, the Quick Entry window is automatically pre-filled with useful information from the application you are working in. From Mail, for example, it will create a link to the email you're reading. In a browser, it captures the URL of the page you are on.

Things 3, Maybe the Pinnacle in App Design | AppAddict

Dropover

Dropover is the king of shelf apps. Shelves are mini-platforms to hold files while you wait to move them or perform actions on them. Some of the actions you can accomplish from Dropover include sending a file to cloud storage and sharing the link, converting or resizing images, sending a file by Airdrop, in a message or email, attaching a file to a note. You can invoke Dropover when you are in any app, which is very convenient for grabbing an image from a web page or some text from any app. Dropover works well with Apple Shortcuts too, making it easy to move and manipulate files.

Dropover, Best in Class

Supercharge

Supercharge is a an that features a variety of tweaks and shortcuts for a number of tasks. My favorites are quit all apps, hide all apps, close all notifications, open Passwords and toggle desktop widgets on and off.

Using Supercharge | AppAddict

Better Touch Tool

Better Touch Tool is anoter automation app that can do a couple of things that Keyboard Maestro and Raycast can't do, such as use the fn key and trigger actions from text strings. I use simple double taps of modifier keys to activate and deactivate Notification Center and Mission Control.

Better Touch Tool Favorites | AppAddict

Others

• Fantastical and BusyCal both allow you to create new appointments and tasks from anywhere on your Mac.
• Language Tool is a writing aid with spelling and grammar checking. You can invoke it anywhere you enter text.
• Default Folder X has a search tool that can bu sommoned from its menu bar interface at any time.

Making It Easier

Two free apps to get to make life as a keyboard warrior easier are Karabiner Elements for remapping keys and creating macros and KeyClu, which gives you a heads-up display of keyboard shortcuts in any app, allowing you to enter your own for apps that it doesn't detect automatically.

The other newsletter is for this blog, one app review delivered to your mailbox every day. in case you don't have enough software in your life - Subscribe | AppAddict Newsletter

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The mountains in northern Georgia, taken from the patio of the lodge at Amicalola Falls State Park, home of the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail.

Privacy Guides: Independent Privacy & Security Resources - Privacy Guides is a not-for-profit, volunteer-run project that hosts online communities and publishes news and recommendations surrounding privacy and security tools, services, and knowledge.

Cleanse - The 21-day Cyber-Cleanse: designed to remove toxic tech from your life

Most Famous Restaurant in Every State - Business Insider - From fine dining restaurants to local barbecue joints, every state has at least one legendary restaurant that everyone knows about.

True Crime - Masters treasures went missing, then the FBI showed up | GolfDigest.com -
The first item the young man stole from Augusta National was a green and white golf towel. This was just after the 2007 Masters, when he had come to understand it was customary for warehouse employees to take one or two small things

What Food was Served at Wild West Saloons? - YouTube - It starts with cowboy bacon and beans and goes from there - From A Taste of History

AdBlock Tester: test your AdBlock extensions - How good is your ad blocking setup? Just go to the page to receive a grade. If you want to get a score of 99 or 100 out of 100, shoot me an email and I'll send you my setup.

Liberating Library - Liberating Library is a book distribution program and online collection of relevant radical resources run by a Pan-African socialist.

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There are quite a few apps with GUIs available for Macs that let you connect various cloud services to upload, download and move files. Most of them are costly. Today I needed to move files from Google Drive to a kDrive, a cloud storage company in Switzerland, Instead of using one of the expensive apps, I opted for a free command utility, rclone, and in just a few minutes initiated a complete transfer of the data on my drive.

If you've dealt with cloud storage, including iCloud over the past few versions of macOS, you might agree with me that Apple has made a mess of it. They insist on hiding your files away in ~/Library/Cloud Storage and other non-obvious locations. By default, the files stay in the cloud, making utilities like Hazel ineffective managing them. You just never know when you click on a file if you are going to have to wait to download it or not. The official clients for Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive and Box.com us that strategy. Even when you select the option to keep a folder downloaded, you get no notice that the download is complete and, in my experience, I have found that the settins revert from time to time with no notice, forcing me to redownload files.

So, I was really happy today to take the time to set up rclone to move the files. You can get a good overview of rclone's history and capabilities from Wikipedia.. You can use rclone with a long list of cloud services.

You can download and install rclone right On a Mac from the terminal, using the command

sudo -v ; curl [rclone.org/install.s...](https://rclone.org/install.sh) | sudo bash

Documentation

You can read the documentation on rclone at the official GitHub repository.

Here are links on how to set rclone for a few common services:

• Google Drive
• Dropbox
• OneDrive

Full Compatibility List

• Alibaba (Aliyun) Object Storage System (OSS)
• Amazon Drive (See note)
• Amazon S3
• Aruba COS[27]
• Backblaze B2
• Box
• C14
• Ceph
• Citrix ShareFile
• Cloudian[28]
• Dell-EMC ECS[29]
• DigitalOcean Spaces
• Dreamhost
• Dropbox
• Enterprise File Fabric[30]
• FTP
• Google Cloud Storage
• Google Drive
• Google Photos
• HDFS
• HTTP
• Hubic
• IBM COS S3
• Jottacloud
• Koofr
• Mail.ru Cloud
• Memset Memstore
• MEGA.io
• Microsoft Azure Blob Storage
• Microsoft OneDrive
• MinIO
• NetApp StorageGRID[31]
• Nextcloud
• OVH
• OpenDrive
• OpenIO[32]
• OpenStack Swift
• Oracle Cloud Storage
• ownCloud
• pCloud
• premiumize.me
• put.io
• QingStor
• Rackspace Cloud Files
• rsync.net
• Scaleway
• Scality[33]
• Seafile
• Selectel[34][35]
• SFTP
• StackPath
• SugarSync
• Tardigrade
• Tencent COS
• Wasabi
• WebDAV
• Yandex Disk
• Zoho Workdrive[30]

GUI Alternatives

File Managers/Browsers

• Odrive - $99 a year
• Multcloud - $189
• Raidrive $34 a year (limited free tier)
• Expandrive $75 lifetime

FTP/SFTP/Cloud Clients

• Cyberduck - FOSS
• Transmit - $45
• Forklift - $20

Mounters (Network Drive Mappers)

• MountainDuck - $39
• CloudMounter - $75
• Netdrive - $50

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I love a parking garage for getting pictures of lines and shadows. Sometimes urban photography can be quite fun.

There is a saying in the recovery community that if I could do anything to my worse enemy, I'd make him self-centered. There's nothing worse than continually being concerned with "How am I doing today?" I'm not knocking therapy. It's helped untold numbers of people, including me. Nor, am I smack-talking introspection because questioning your motives and evaluating yourself are healthy practices. No, what I'm getting at is the type of person who is always concerned with fairness, about what size your slice of pie is compared to his, about how life rewards you while it shafts him. I don't like that guy. I would rather not hang out with him.

What I find enjoyable is having a circle of people and a mind with enough space to let them all in. Most of us have our person, to borrow a concept from Grey's Anatomy. We have the one person whi is at the head of the line when we start making space in our consciousness when we begin to make room for something outside the scope of our wants and needs. No need to tell you that my person is Wonder Woman, my wife, my partner, my friend, and my coach. Although she sometimes doubts it, I evaluate almost every interesting fact in my life to decide whether I should share it with her. Tech-geek that I am, I have special apps and certain workflows just to be able to send her things during the day that she might like or be interested in.

One of my morning rituals is reading over my journal and looking at photos from this day in past years. Now that I've been doing the IndieWeb thing for longer than a year, I'm starting to see quotes from my favorite bloggers show up in my journal. I dig being able to send someone a screenshot to let them know, "Hey, I thought you were pretty astute last year and I still feel the same way." Who doesn't like to get fan mail, right?

For the people, like me, who share personal bits and pieces of their lives, well, it's better than a television show trying to keep up with what's happening in people's lives. During the day I start to wonder, How is mb feeling today, He's been ill. Or I wonder how Annie's son finished out the wrestling season or if Alexandra is freezing her butt off waiting for the bus on a Quebec sidewalk. When I think about the people working for the government, I think about Jen, Scott's wife her who had her dream vacation curtailed because of the fascists. and, OMG, if someone goes off the grid for an extended period of time, I start getting nervous. It constantly happens. Someone I enjoy reading, just gets fed up with the Internet and they disappear. I hate it.

It's a rare day when I don't send someone a photo I have of them. This week, I sent my youngest brother a shot of the one and only time he ever wore cycling shorts in his entire life. He called me stupid. I laughed. My brother-in-law scanned hundreds of my extended family's photos and shred them with us all. I like to find funny, early 1950s pictures of my dad with his flattop haircut and send those to him or pictures of my mom who was and is beautiful, just to let her know I am thinking of her. I have to stop myself from inundating my kids with constant pictures of their kids, most of which they sent me in the first place. It's just that all those grand babies are too precious not to show someone.

I have a vivid imagination. I consider it a blessing. When I was a third shift prison guard, stuck on a gun tower for eight hours, decades before cell phones were a thing, the only way I kept my sanity was an active mind. These days, I catch myself imagining the lives of my favorite fictional characters from television shows and movies. I gauge a show by how easy it is to bring its characters to life in my imagination. Take The Wire for instance. It was a show about the people of Baltimore, all kinds of people: cops, drug dealers, dockworkers, politicians, reporters, school teachers and more. One of my all-time favorites was Omar Little, a gay gangster with a penchant for robbing drug dealers, never regular people. He was courageous, funny, loving, intelligent and knew exactly what he wanted right until he was killed by a grade school kid in a corner store while buying his beloved Honey Nut Cheerios and Newport cigarettes. I think about Omar often and wonder what would have happened to him if he'd lived.

I'm not too good at striking up conversations with strangers, although in the right circumstances I don't mind it. My mother is the master at making friends with waitresses and clerks. She isn't putting people on either. She's genuinely interested in them. Mom admires anyone with a kind spirit and looks down on no one. Not once, ever. She might not approve of certain lifestyle choices, but she doesn't consider herself superior to anyone. She's just glad she doesn't have any tattoos and wishes I didn't either. My mother wasn't a big fan of me getting my ear pierced either, but that was a long time ago.

The moral of this longer than I intended post, is that if you want to be happy, think about others. Think about how you can make them happy. It will rub off. I promise.

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Street scene, downtown Charlotte, NC.

One of the reasons that the United States is in the middle of an existential crisis is that too many damned people believe everything they read on the Internet. For these people, the Internet is not the information super highway. It is a cesspool of lies, misinformation, manipulation by foreign adversaries and scammers out to make a buck. It is beholden to MAGA and the right wing, who grow angry and vengeful when they are fact checked. To keep from being attacked by the government, Meta, the parent company of Facebook fired its fact checkers when Donald Trump was reelected. Elon Musk fired Twitter's fact checkers when he paid 44 billion dollars for the company.

No information source is infallible. Still, intelligent people should be able to separate fact from fiction. In the immortal words of way too may people Do your research.

Credible Information Sources

PolitiFact - Our only agenda is to publish the truth so you can be an informed participant in democracy.

Snopes.com | The definitive fact-checking site and reference source for urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation. - Snopes (/ ˈ s n oʊ p s/), formerly known as the Urban Legends Reference Pages, is a fact-checking website. It has been described as a "well-regarded reference for sorting out myths and rumors" on the Internet. The site has also been seen as a source for both validating and debunking urban legends and similar stories in American popular culture.

Some other fact-checking resources similar to Politifact and Snopes include:

1. FactCheck.org - A Project of The Annenberg Public Policy Center
2. Fact Check: Political & News Fact Check | AP News
3. Fact Check | Reuters
4. .Full Fact
5. BBC Verify
6. FactCheck – Channel 4 News
7. Lead Stories
8. Truth or Fiction? – Seeking truth, exposing fiction
9. International Fact-Checking Network - Poynter

I have a couple of newsletters now. One is a weekly collection from my personal and links blogs that goes out on Mondays. - ✏️ Subscribe | Amerpie by Lou Plummer

The other newsletter is myapp review blog, delivered daily in case you don't have enough software in your life - Subscribe | AppAddict Newsletter

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When it comes to the new breed of social media, I prefer the federated and independent nature of Mastodon over everything else. I want nothing to do with Threads or anything else tainted by Meta. I like the atmosphere at Bluesky, but we have to face that it is a company founded by a billionaire, funded with venture capital and it's going to be enshittified one day - breaking the heart of millions. Mastodon, on the other hand was founded in Europe and is out of the control of the American fascist movement. Unlike the reality with Blue Sky, you really can have your very own Mastodon server. While it has an undeserved reputation for being difficult for normal people to use, there is only a single extra step to get started and there are many guides and walk throughs o hold your hand throught that step. In the 15 months of being on Mastodon, I have yet to witness the kind of hate filled craziness seen on corporate owned social media every day.

There are almost 100 different apps with Mastodon access available for Apple hardware and a few online, browser based clients as well. Here are a few unique offerings that can compliment or replace your primary Mastodon client.

Newsmast (free)

In a first for the Fediverse, we’re seamlessly integrating content from your home server with Newsmast’s hand-curated, knowledge-sharing Communities, hosted on our customised Mastodon instance, newsmast.social. There’s no scraping or content aggregation - all the community content comes from Newsmast users or via federation, and is moderated by applying the Oliphant Tier 0 blocklist, filters that keep out NSFW, crypto and hate-speech, and our human team.

Automadon ($14.99 year)

Automadon provides a suite of Shortcuts actions for Mastodon with support for multiple accounts. Actions available within Shortcuts include: • Post to Mastodon • Full-text search • Get account details, timelines, and following/follower lists • Interact with posts, including boosting, favoriting, and bookmarking posts • Follow/unfollow, block/unblock, mute/unmute accounts

Toot Later for Mastodon ($4.00)

With TootLater, you can: • Schedule multiple posts with different dates and times • Add multiple Mastodon accounts and switch between them easily • Attach images to your posts and preview them before sending • TootLater uses the official Mastodon API to ensure your account and posts are secure

Video for Ants ($3.99)

Got videos that are too big to upload to Mastodon? Everyone does. What kind of limits are these?! All you have to do is pick your video and then tap a button and video for ants will automatically convert the format, compress the bitrate, and optimize the fps (frame rate) as needed to make them fit. You only have to tap a button. That's it. That's the app.

Threaditor: write for everyone ($9.99)

• Draft threads for popular microblogging platforms all in one place
• Save unlimited threads to the cloud - always pick up where you left off
• Link your accounts to automatically publish, and group accounts to post to multiple places at once
• Add images and polls to your posts

Re: Toot ($2.99)

Re: Toot turns Mastodon posts into images that are suitable for quote posts. Images are accompanied by attribution to the original author and an alternative text. Images created by Re: Toot can also be shared to other social networks and messaging services. To create an image from a Mastodon post, just copy the link the post and open Re: Toot or invoke the app through the Share Sheet.

Still Followers for Mastodon (Expensive - just use the free features)

Still Followers is a useful analytics tool to keep you fro getting suckered by the people who game social media by following and unfollowing people. The free version offers several useful tools for the casual user.

AppAddict Picks

• My favorite Mastodon client isMona for Mastodon, a one time purchase with more features than any other Mastodon client.
• My favorite Mastodon instance is social.lol, which is for members of OMG.LOL and IndieWeb platform with multiple features inlcuding a link in bio page, a blog, photo hosting, an omg.lol email address and much more, all for $20 a year.
• My favorite social media tool for analytics, scheduled posts. account discovery, reports and more is Fedica. The free tier is useful. A paid membership is insane. Works with 10 different social media platforms.
• If you want to learn more about the Fediverse, how to use it, what it can do - head over to Fedi Tips.

I have a couple of newsletters now. One is a weekly collection from my personal and links blogs that goes out on Mondays. - ✏️ Subscribe | Amerpie by Lou Plummer

The other newsletter is for this blog, one app review delivered to your mailbox every day. in case you don't have enough software in your life - Subscribe | AppAddict Newsletter

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On the Appalachian Trail in New England, you spend all day moving the through the woods of Connecticut to suddenly come upon this cleared field with its breathtaking view of Western Massachussets in the distance. My god, it was so beautiful. One of best moments of my hike.

This is a special edition of AppAddict. Tonight, I'm covering one of the best sources of computing functionality that often goes overlooked in the hunt for productivity enhancements and better work flows. There are many browser extensions that replace or enhance apps you use every day. This is my personal aresenal that I use in my daily workflow.

A modern Mac is a miraculous machine. My decidedly middle of the road laptop is an M2 with 16GB od RAM. I bought it in December of 2023 and hope to continue using it for years. The number of programs I have running at login (~40) would give Y2K Lou nightmares. The sheer number of installed applications would freak (628) that guy out. Finally, there are my browser extensions, and I'm only talking about the ones for my daily driver, Vivaldi, not the ones in the other five browsers I have installed. Where once I would have been concerned with somehow slowing down the Internet, today I just want to get the maximum amount of functionality out of my interface with it. I use A LOT of extensions. Let's get to them, shall we?

Aboard

Aboard does a a great many things but the way I use it is simple. It what I click when there is a webpage I want to share with my wife. She gets a notification on her phone when I share something and she can view it in the Aboard app or in a browser at the website. It's how I share shows I want to watch, restaurants I want to check out or news items that are blowing my mind.

Activity Watch

Activity Watch is a free time tracker that tells me how long I've been using my computer, which apps I use and for how long and what websites I visited and for how long. I can assign apps and web pages to categories and make the reports it creates as granular as I want to.

Activity Watch - Free No Effort Time Tracker | AppAddict

Language Tool

I use the paid version of this grammar, paraphraser and spelling tool, but I have used the free version as well and it is definitely a step up from native tools.

Language Tool - Free is Good, Paid is Better | AppAddict

Anylist Recipe Importer

I only activate this when I'm looking for recipes. Anylist importer clears all the cruft away from recipe sites and kust imports the ingredients and directions and leaves out all the SEO crap. It works with the Mac/iOS/Web app called Anylist, which is an app I've used for over a decade for shopping and packing lists and collecting recipes.

AnyList for Recipes, Shopping and More | AppAddict

Archive Today Automator

This is the extension I couldn't live without. Whenever I want to read a paywalled article from the New York Times, The Atlantic, The Verge, Medium, The Wall Street Journal or practically any other site, I just hit this button in my toolbar to obtain immediate access to a version from the Internet Archive. I subscribe to and support several progressive news organizations so I don't feel bad for reading MSM sites for free.

Block Party

Block Party is a paid service that inspects settings on invasive websites and changes things with your consent to offer yoy the most privacy possible. It works with Reddit, Google, YouTube, Strava, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, amd Instagram.

Bluesky Sidebar

Bluesky sidebar loads on web pages from the Bluesky social media platform and gives you extra information on the people you follow, the people who follow you, trending topics and the lists you are subscribed to.

Cloudhiker

Cloudhiker is a freemium service that is the closest thing you'll find on the wen today to the old Stumble Upon website. Use Cloudhiker to suggest and discover new sites in a large number of categories.

Cloudhiker - StumbleUpon for the IndyWeb | Linkage

Fedica

Fedica is a freemium service that allows you to schedule posts on all the major social media sites, you can crosspost to several of them at once. Paid customers get analytics and research tools, pluse reports from certain sites, like Mastodon and Bluesky.

Fedica - Post to Multiple Social Networks at Once, On a Schedule - For Free | AppAddict

Kagi Privacy Pass

Thiis extension is iused to authenticate to the paid Kagi search engine if you want to block all access toy what you are searching for. With this enabled, there is no history of your search activity using Kagi.

Using Kagi Search Engine on a Mac - Software and Tips | AppAddict

Markdownload

This is another one of my favorite extensons. It copies webpage links as Markdown links for insertion into posts and documents. It cam also copy whole pages as Markdown, although now that usefulness has been supplanted by the Obsidian Web Clipper. Finally is will create a markdown list from all the open tabs in a browser windos. It's great for bloggers and researchers.

MarkDownload - The Browser Extension that Works With #Obsidian | Amerpie by Lou Plummer

Mastodon Redirector

No matter what Mastodon instance I land on while browsing and following toots from others, clicking this button opens the page in my home instance, allowing me to like, follow and comment with ease. I find that ut works better for me than Graze, another plugin with similar features.

Obsidian Web Clipper

This free tool uses templates to download web pages as markdown files. Using AI, you can get summaries of the page and automatically assign tags. It will even download the transcript from YouTube videos. I have templates for IMDB, Bluesky, Mastodon, Reddit, YouTube, Medium, Wikiepedia and general web pages.

Privacy Badger

This free extension from the Electronic Frontier Foundation is not an ad blocker. It works hand in hand with them to detect and block trackers using an algorithm and machine learning. The EFF is working on ways to prevent browser fingerprinting, the strategy used by tech companies to follow you around the web without cookies.

Privacy Badger Extension from the Electronic Freedom Foundation | AppAddict

Raindrop.io

Raindrop is a freemium bookmarking service from which I gety great value. I use it to create webpages of links I want to share, to save canonical copies of stories so that if the are removed from the Internet, I can still access them. I have never used my bookmarks more than I have with Raindrop.

Battle of the Bookmark Managers | AppAddict

Quick Pocket

I am a big believer in automation and in reading the work of smart people at depth. Aside from using Pocket as the excellent read it later service that it is, I also use it's integration with IFTTT and RSS to automate the saving of full text blog entries from Matt Birchler and Jarrod Blundy, two of my favorite tech oriented bloggers. Their articles are routed through Pocket right into Obsidian or Day One for preservation and reference. Pocket is owned by the Mozilla foundation.

Ublock Origin Light

The Original Ublock Origin is still the best as blocker ever made. It is no longer compatible with Chrome, Edge and Vivaldi, although Forefox users can still use it. Using a complete security toolkit that includes a customer DNS server, built in blockers in Vivaldi, Ublock Origin light and Freetube for YouTube, I routinely score 99 or 100 on ad blocking tests.

My Online Security Setup | Linkage

The other newsletter is for this blog, in case you don't have enough software in your life - Subscribe | AppAddict Newsletter

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Fun times in the spring with a maco lens. You have to get these shots before the mosquitoes get too bad!

I like Wednesdays. On Wednesdays, Wonder Woman usually gets to work from home, so I get to spend the day with her, even if we don't get a chance to interact all that much. I just like to be able look across the room to see her sitting with her laptop on the couch. When I make tea, I get to make two cups, instead of just one. In all the years before the pandemic, except a snowy day or two, I don't remember her ever working from our home. Like many jobs, hers recognized that today's technology, coupled with the work ethic of modern employees meant that people could indeed, get things done without sitting in a cubicle all day.

Thinking about that got me to consider how many things are different now than they were in the past. Change happens slowly, but when you look back over time, you realize how weird it would be if things you once took for granted became commonplace again. Take smoking, for example. So many people used to smoke and they did it everywhere. My high school had a smoking area outside the cafeteria for students to light up. You could practically see the smoke billowing from the teacher's lounge between classes as the staff went in for a nicotine fix. You could smoke everywhere - in the library, airplanes, restaurants. Hell, you could get an ashtray brought to your hospital bed. At the prison where I worked in the 80s, if an inmate could not afford cigarettes, they cost 45 cents a pack, the state would give them loose tobacco and rolling papers.

Grocery shopping was a different experience too. You used to have to wait for fruits and vegetables to come into season. There were no refrigerated containers bringing you fresh blueberries from South America in December. There was much less variety, too. I don't think I ever had anything but iceberg lettuce until I was well into adulthood. There were two kinds of apples available, Red Delicious and Golden Delicious. Eventually Granny Smith made her way in, but forget having the choice of a half dozen different types like we have today.

Before the gas crisis of the early 70s, most people went to full-service stations where you didn't have to get out of the car. The attendant would check your oil and wash your windshield while you got a fill-up of that sweet 50 cents a gallon leaded gasoline. Other than the time I had to get gas in New Jersey, where the law forbids you from pumping your own, I don't think I have ever had someone gas up my car but me. By the time I was able to drive, we were well into the era of expensive gas. In fact, in terms of real purchasing power, has never cost more than it did when I was in high school, driving my family's 1975 Impala.

Even my kids can wax nostalgically about how things used to be in tech. They remember when they had to beg to use our landline in the evenings because I kept it tied up with my dial-up Internet. My daughter used to wait until after 9pm to talk to her boyfriend because that's when her free cell phone minutes started. She dated a guy once whose cell phone number was long distance, and she racked up a giant bill talking to him, even though in reality, he was just a few miles away. She even had to ration her text messages because her plan only let her have a small number for free.

Some things have gotten worse instead of better. At my high school, the student government, all the clubs and sports teams were racially diverse. All of us Gen X kids had started school a couple of years into the integration era, escaping the last remnants of Jim Crow by a couple of years. I've been disappointed to see self-segregation become the norm in many areas. My younger cousin went to the same high school I did. By the time he got there, white kids had just about stopped playing on the football team. He was one of only three to even try out. I worked in education for 20 years and saw too many mono-cultured events take place. It's depressing.

There are so many little things too:

• Paying for everything with plastic. People used to scoff at you if you had a credit card purchase for only a dollar or two.
• Standard transmission cars used to be the cheap model, not the special order that they are today.
• Only upper middle-class people could afford a $700 VCR and the steep membership and deposits at the first video stores.
• Actors either made movies or they made TV show. The thought of Robert De Niro starring in a TV series was laughable. Now here we are.
• There used to be liberal Republicans (Nelson Rockefeller) and conservative Democrats (most of the southern ones). Today the GOP is batshit crazy and any Democrat who thinks people ought to have food, shelter, and medical care gets called a Commie.

What are your favorite examples of how things are different today?

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I haven't been arrested in 39 years, I came close a couple of times during demonstrations against the war in Iraq, but some wise elders advised me to cooperate with pushy police officers to avoid it, so I did. Most of my run-ins with the law happened when I was a teenager and they all involved alcohol. The sober version oi me has been pretty good at staying away from the police. But, as Bob Dylan so aptly put it, the times, they are a changing.

I'm not sure whether it's paranoid to fear political persecution as a regular left wing American citizen or not. It's very evident that the current federal government will avoid due process whenever and however it can. Rounding up Venezuelan immigrants and flying them to EL Salvador against a judges orders should wake folks up. Then there are the legal residents who have excercised free speech in a way that pisses MAGA off. These people have not broken the law. They said words out loud in public. That's it. That's their offense. For that they've been imprisoned. That's the America that we are living in.

So, that's why I am reading up on how to handle myself if they come for me, or if I get pulled aside while traveling. I don't think I have it in me to just be quiet and go along with what's happening to my country.

1. Do not be violent.
2. Don't talk to the police
3. Don't run
4. Don't submit to warrantless searches
5. Avoid asking for medical help
6. Do not admit guilt

Know Your Rights | Protesters’ Rights | ACLU

What Happens If You Are Arrested For Protesting? - Criminal Appeals Advocates, P.C.

Here’s What to Do If You Get Detained at a U.S. Airport

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I've been working on getting all my software licensing information into KeyKeeper, an app by the same team that operates Bundlehunt. I've been buying Mac software since the days of the classic OS. Believe it or not, some apps I purchased as far back as 2004 are still functional, requiring the original license ket when I set up a new system. Shout out to SuperDuper!

I've used various methods to track licensing information: a spreadsheet, Evernote, an email tag, Obsidian, the freeware app, Licensed All of them are functional enough, but when I saw the features in KeyKeeper, available for $4.99 in the current bundle, I decided to try it out.

KeyKeeper is security focused, requiring a password to enter the database. The design follows modern Mac conventions. There are all of the database fields you'd expect for this type of app, but you can add unlimited custom fields and file attachments, useful for screenshots and apps that have downloadable license keys. The fields for URLs are live, so if you need to visit a product website or redownload the app, you can do both right from KeyKeeper. A feature I like is the ability to create your won categories for your apps and make your own assignments. You can also create a favorites list. If you've been tracking your app purchases in a speadsheet, you can import the data into KeyKeeper and save yourself all the manual data entry. Once you have the data in KeyKeeper, you can export it into a spreadsheet as well. You can use Python to convert the exported spreadsheet into Markdown notes for Obsidian, if you think that would be helpful.

A single license for KeyKeeper is good for use on two Macs. The regular price is $11.99 if you miss the Bundlehunt special.

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One of the unfortunate stories being written and rewritten lately is about how (wait for it), liberals/progressives/"the left" are in an information bubble because they've forsaken Twitter and canceled their subscriptions to the Washington Post. Supposedly, people like me are out of touch with the majority of voters in the country because I choose not to consume news that's controlled by people with a vested interest in the success of MAGA — meaning Elon Musk, the Murdoch family, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and their billionaire cohort. Many of the ostensibly centrist journalists who fret about the poor misinformed leftists are actually just peeved that the social media following they labored to build on Twitter over the past decade has deserted them. It's just not fair. Besides, it would be a lot of work to start over somewhere else.

Needless to say, I think these people are full of shit. MAGA has been running the country for less than 100 days and already ABC, CBS, and Meta have settled frivolous lawsuits initiated by the US president rather than stand their ground in the face of his threats. A good part of my upbringing occurred while my step-father worked as a journalist. I have long supported and admired the underpaid and overworked people who bring us the news, but that feeling is ebbing in the modern era. The industry hasn't handled the way the country has been reshaped. It's still in the habit of framing arguments as if both sides have merit, even when one of those sides is batshit crazy, racist, misogynistic and incoherent. The word "sanewashing" had to be invented to describe what once respected outlets like the New York Times does to present Donald Trump as if he weren't a crazy person. Even Fox News cuts away from his live speeches to keep from showing the nonsensical, incoherent imbecile that he truly is.

Until lately, most Americans were in agreement that the Civil Rights Movement was a well managed and courageous era in American history. A non-violent crusade of moral righteousness prevailed over hatred and bigotry and racial hatred, murder, and bombings. What's not often discussed is how much disapproval people like MLK faced in their time. When Kind was killed, he was among the most-disliked men in the country. The majority of white people did not agree with the tactics of the Freedom Riders and those conducting sit-ins at lunch counters. In hindsight, we can see that the majority were wrong. The minority were right. The same holds true today. The hateful MAGA policies of 2025 are wrong. The belief of the minority in justice, a social safety net and equal rights is as morally righteous as it has always been.

I do not need to understand in great detail why straight conservatives want to turn back the clock on the LGBT community. I don't need an explanation or justification for mean-spirited immigration enforcement that now includes deportation and incarceration without a hearing, straight into a third world prison cell. I do not need some fancy-pants journo to explain the country I've lived in for the last six decades to me FFS.

What people who accuse the left of being in a bubble fail to consider is that we live in the same damn country they do. We see the same things they see. We pay the same prices at the grocery store. We fill out applications for the same jobs. I live in a purple state with a Democratic governor and attorney general who I admire as they try to protect me from the fire hose of WTF in Washington. There are millions and millions of us, and we know exactly what is happening without having to watch Fox News or have the paid employees of the billionaires break it down for us. We know how our neighbors feel. We hear them. We just think they're wrong.

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You are probably familiar with Betteridge's Law of Headlines whether you know its name or not. The law is an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." It's a common sense analysis of a journalistic practice where publications seek to avoid being incorrect when they aren't certain about an outcome. Were they certain, the story they published on the topic would have been presented as a certainty.

Becoming familiar with the thinking behind Betteridge's Law is a good step on the road to media literacy.

Betteridge's Law of Headlines | Tools for Thinking

YSK the fundamentals of Betteridge's Law of Headlines

The Blog and Newsletter

Ian Betteridge is still around and still saying smart things. He's one of the more experienced tech journalists still plying the trade. His crtitiques of Apple, other journalists and the Internet writ large, are generally dead on and entertaining.

Ian Betteridge - Ian's Blog

One of the best newsletters I get each week is Ian's 10 Blue Links. The stories are generally topical and tech related. Ian point's out hypocrisy and industry bullshit with deadly accuracy.

Ten Blue Links, “good news, bad news, old news” edition

Follow Ian Betteridge on Mastodon

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For anyone with a home lab or who is invested in the Internet of Things, the ability to scan your network is a tool that you want in your management arsenal. Additionally, if you live in an urban environment, being able to monitor the devices on your Wi-Fi network is important if you suspect one of your neighbors might be attempting to access anything they shouldn't.

iNet Network Scanner from BananaGlue GmbH is a particularly useful tool for anyone with a home network that's heavy on Apple devices. It's scanner can correctly identify laptops, desktops, iPhones, iPads, Apple TVs and HomePods. It can also pick up other computers, tablets, thermostats, picture frames and similar devices.

Network Scanner

• Displays information for all devices powered on and connected to the network including their IP and MAC addresses.
• Customize the names of the devices in your network and assign them custom icons
• Set the IP range to be scanned or the interfaces to be scanned
• Export the scan results as an Excel (csv) or PDF file
• Connect to devices with different protocols from within the scanner (e.g., SMB or SSH)

Bonjour monitor

• Display of all running services (Bonjour) in real time (e.g. SMB. SSH, Media Sharing, VNC)
• Display of the services running on a specific device
• Display of detailed information about a service
• Selection of the active Bonjour domain

iNet Network Scanner also features wake on LAN controls to sleep, wake and restart compatible devices. For anyone still using an Apple Airport as a home Wi-Fi device, there are numerous monitoring features.

The app is available in the App Store for $24.99 as a one time purchase with lifetime upgrades.

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The largest private home ever constructed, the Biltmore House in Asheville, NC. It’s a nice place to visit. I’ve cycled and kayaked on the estate. Good times.

This is the 52nd week of this blog's life. It doesn't seem like I've been doing this for almost 365 days, but I have. I think I may have missed a day in there somewhere, but i made up for it the next. In fact, I've posted 377 times since March 28, 2024. It's a good thing I'm not as talkative in real life as I once was, because evidently I can't shut up on the Internet. But, you know what? I think I'd rather write that many original blog posts than I would engage in some unfulfilling back and forth on social media arguing with someone who is never going to change their mind. That kind of exchange is like a Kabuki play where every line is predictable, as is the outcome. Somebody gets called a Nazi. Someone gets called a Commie. End of.

What I appreciate about blogging is the opportunity to be my consistently authentic self to the people interested enough to check in a regular or semi-regular basis. It makes me extremely happy when other people casually refer to Wonder Woman the same way that I do, or even better, when they are casual enough to shorten it to just WW. I dig getting teased that I outsource my blog to one of my many grandkids as the likely explanation for my proclivity to post so often. When I left mt job, the support and congratulations meant a lot to me. It felt personal.

I try to be the same kind of supportive reader for my blogging friends. It's just a matter of being interested and paying attention. That's always been my nature. I knew the names of my co-workers kids and whether their parents were still alive, what kind of dog they had and what their favorite TV show was. I with one guy for 20 years and I could answer every one of those questions about him and I doubt that he could have answered a single one of them about me or any of the other people on our team. He was a nice person, just uninterested in other people. Trust me, if you share pieces of your life on your blog, I am paying attention. I know who loves dachshunds, who has kids in college, whose partners have health issues and what kind of software you like the best.

I have a special tag in my email so that I can easily find letters from the people who have written me about the things I've posted, even the people who just have technical questions. I like providing technical help. It does not make me feel taken advantage of. I've had people write to me about some deeply personal topics, about quitting drinking and dealing with depression, about struggles at work and in their relationships. I consider it a real privilege to get a letter like that.

I have no idea how many people read Living Out Loud. Sure there are analytics and I look at those but I have a hard time translating those numbers into human beings. My favorite part of analytics is seeing that someone has posted a link back to something I've written. That's the best feeling. I try to repay the favor and promote my favorites in return. It's all part of being am IndieWeb blogger and member of a community of creative people who have chosen the same medium to share themselves with the world. It takes what it takes to get us all to where we are today. Hindsight is 20/20. I just wish I'd wasted a lot less energy on Facebook all those years when I could have beeb doing this instead. Of well.

If you've read enough posts on this blog to know me a little, I appreciate you. I'm a fortunate man.

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I recently converted my Windows laptop to Ubuntu. I don't rely on Windows for anything personally any longer so I didn't need a dedicated machine for that OS. However, as the extended family tech support guy, there are occasions when I need to use Windows 10 and Windows 11 to troubleshoot issues for my relatives who have yet to see the light and buy a Mac. I relied on Oracle's free VirtualBox for a long time to build VMs and I've had licensed copies of Parallels through work off and on through the years. It's a good product, but not worth the price just for occasional use.

My current choice for running Windows in a VM on a Mac is UTM. It's free and allows you to run an Intel based version of Windows on an M series Mac. It's slow and inefficient, not something you want to use every day, but for testing and troubleshooting, it's fine. You can't game with a UTM virtual machine. UTM does not currently support GPU emulation/virtualization on Windows and therefore lacks support for 3D acceleration (e.g. OpenGL and DirectX). If you need a Windows license, you can get one at Stack Socialfor $15.

There is a gallery of prebuilt VMson the UTM site.

Windows

• Windows 11
• Windows 10
• Windows 7
• Windows XP

Linux (multiple version of each distro)

• Arch
• Debian
• Fedora
• Kali
• Ubuntu

My choice for creating and running Mac VMs is Virtual Buddy. You can choose a Mac release (including betas) from a long list ranging from macOS 13.3 all the way to macOS 15.1 RC1. If you have a URL for another IPSW or an IPSW you have already downloaded, you can use them as well.

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The view from the walkway of the Manhattan Bridge.

I thought about doing stand up comedy for a while. I never did it, but I thouight anout it. While I was in that thinking mindset, I decided to study some of the greats to see if I could get some insights. I decided to start with Lenny Bruce. I'd never actually heard him perform. I was only familiar with his legend. He was recognized as warrior for free speech. He was arrested more than once and at his landmark 1964 New York trial, defended by Woody Allen, Bob Dylan, Jules Feiffer, Allen Ginsberg, Norman Mailer, William Styron, and James Baldwin. I was eager hear his comedy.

It was disappointing. It was too topical. Lacking detailed familiarity with the news events of the day, I wasn't able to tie the jokes together. The same thing happened when I got my youngest daighter to watch reruns of In Living Color, a show I remembered as being hilarious. When we watched it together, it was full of jokes anout Barbara Bush's hair and Mike Tyson's legal woes. My daughter had no idea what they were talkinga about and soon grew bored.

So, my theory on the best comedians is that they are the ones who speak to the human condition. Their work is timeless. It's just as funny 40 and 50 years later as it was when it was first recorded. Here are some examples.

Richard Pryor

George Carlin

Mitch Hedberg

Bill Hicks

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The years 2009-2012 were the peak of my endurance cycling career. I've ridden since then, but never with the same laser focused dedication to absolutely piling the miles on. During those years, I seldom missed dedicating both weekend days to riding solo or with my cycling club, or both. From mid-February until the first week of November, I also rode three or four days after work in progressively longer distances as the days grew longer. In 2011, I averaged 30 miles a day for the entire year, accumulating nearly 11K miles on my bike. It was loads of fun, although a bit obsessive and selfish. Balance is better, but that is a lecture for another time.

On Veterans Day (November 11th in the US), It was my habit to organize a 100-mile ride since many members of the local cycling community are military connected and most folks get the day off. I'd make announcements at group rides for a couple of weeks, post it to our website and make a flier to hang at the local bike shop.. The typical attendance at one of these rides would be about 20 people. There was no fee. Riders were expected to bring their supplies and money to refuel at convenience stores. We didn't have any organized support. If someone's bike broke down, or if they were unable to continue due to fatigue or injury, we'd figure something out. Someone's spouse would get a phone call and some vague directions is what I'm saying. That rarely happened, though. People were pretty good at not overestimating their abilities and if someone started having a bad day, usually someone would volunteer to ride with them at a slower pace so they could finish the ride. It wasn't a race or a competition.

Although there's always a rotating cast of characters in a transient community like ours, I generally knew everyone in the club. We also had plenty of people who were in the local triathlon club who rode and trained with us. Some of them I only knew by reputation. One of them I'd seen on social media. My online observations informed me that she was a partner in big accounting firm, took European vacations and had been a young parent like me. She was one of the founders of the triathlon club and a current officer. She'd been one of the first people in the area to complete a competitive Ironman triathlon, meaning that she went to race, not just to finish. Likewise, she had a reputation for being supremely fit and very competitive.

1. Swim: 2.4 miles (3.86 kilometers)
2. Bike: 112 miles (180.25 kilometers)
3. Run: 26.2 miles (42.20 kilometers, a full marathon)

As was my habit, I was early to the ride. When I got there, a car I didn't recognize was in the parking lot and a diminutive lady in cycling kit was pumping up the tires on her carbon fiber road bike. It was her, the triathlon woman. I went over and introduced myself, Johnny Cask style—"Hello, I'm Lou Plummer." Although there were no other men in the community named Lou, most people called me by my full name for some reason, so that's what I used when I met new folks. I asked her if her name was Carol, mentioning offhandedly that I'd seen her on social media. I did not want to give off stalker vibes.

I'll be honest. She fascinated me. How could someone that small and compact be so damn powerful? Plus she, like me, had several grandchildren. With all the pit stops and a mid-ride meal, the riders made a full day of it. I spent a good portion of the time chatting with my new friend, riding beside her in a double pace line and taking my turns at the front of the group at her side. Since I was also the ride organizer and thus the de facto leader, I also had to shout out directions for every turn and keep tabs on all the riders, especially the ones attempting the 100-mile distance for the first time.

I'd picked out a well-know local burger joint as our lunch stop. She and I sat together. It was only later that I discovered that she didn't eat bread or cookies because of dietary restrictions. After all was said and done at the end of the day, I knew that I wanted to be friends with this lady. She and I felt the same way about training and health. We had similar priorities, and we liked riding our bikes for really, really long distances. Over the next four months, we rode together every chance we had, including one epic holiday weekend where we accumulated almost 300 miles together along with an Army friend of ours.

I was a very social, very talkative, outwardly enthusiastic guy. She was generally quiet, reserved and tended to look at me oddly whenever I'd crack one too many jokes. That would cause me to shut up for about 30 seconds — her plan, I guess. A lot of endurance sports can involve what is known as type two fun. That's an activity that is only enjoyable after the fact. While participating in type two fun, people tend to suffer. We had some of that, riding in winds that were so brutal that neither of us could go faster than 10mph, when under ideal conditions we could maintain 20mph for hours on end. I was a large guy for a cyclist. I outweighed the heaviest professionals by a good 30 pounds. I do not like to climb hills, not on a bike, not on foot, not in any fashion. As I have mentioned, she is small and in possession of phenomenal athletic ability. She got to be excellent at patiently waiting for me whenever we faced elevation changes.

Anyway, I'll cut to the chase. One hundred and twelve days after our first ride, I confessed to her that my feelings for her had grown into something more than just those one has for a riding buddy. Well, come to find out, she felt the same way. Within a week, we became partners and have been together ever since. I still hate to climb hills.

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I am in the process of de-Googling. I already moved my email to Fastmail. I changed my default search engine to Kagi. I am moving my photographs to Ente. Today, I took advantage of an ongoing sale at Stack Social to purchase a lifetime deal on 1 TB of cloud storage with the Slovenian company, Koofr For $120. I've been paying a monthly fee for cloud storage for more than 10 years and I'm delighted that is coming to an end. My de-Googling project is based more on my desire to preserve my privacy and protect myself from the US government, but I'm happy to save a few bucks while doing it. For anyone who wants to try out Koofr, they offer a 10GB account for free. If you just want an offshore place to store documents, that is a healthy amount of storage, but not enough if you are looking to have a safe place for photos, music and larger backups. You can also subscribe to Koofr monthly with plans starting at a trifling €.5 a month, going up in increments for an additional 10, 25, 100, and 250 GBs before getting to TB and greater options.

The Mac client for Koofr allows you to set up access to your storage as if it were a network drive. Koofr also sets up a folder in your home directory that is synced with its cloud servers. I like this much better than the default location in the ~/Library/Cloud Storage folder used by Google Drive, Dropbox and Box.com. You can add additional folders to sync with the cloud, something I typically do with my default downloads folder so that I can easily share those files between devices. If you have Dropbox, Google Drive or One Drive accounts, you can mount those providers inside of your Koofr vault, something I'm taking advantage of while I work on moving the files I want to secure over to European based storage, protected by European privacy laws which are much stricter than in the US. Koofr's search function will search the files on each of those services as well as itself. The Koofr app also allows me to set up local file sharing between computers on my home network where the data never goes to a could service, it's just a convenient feature to share data between devices.

I was also able to set up Koofr easily in my iOS file manager, FileBrowserPro, using WebDAV.

There is a Koofr client for iOS, Windows and Linux if you use those platforms.

Even free accounts can use use Koofr Vault for extra strong protection. Open source, client-side, zero-knowledge encrypted storage application by Koofr.

There are even more features than I have covered for collaboration, file recovery, data migration from Meta platforms, an image editor, duplicate file detection, drive space management and more.

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Do One Thing | dansinker.com - We are living through a period of protracted awfulness, and the end is not coming anytime soon. Those in power would like nothing more than to keep you exhausted and impotent, incapable of getting anything done (especially the things that will undermine their power). So do one thing.

11 Ways to Automate Your Life (and Get Back More Free Time) | Lifehacker - Use your one wild and precious life for stuff you actually want to do.

The Anti-DEI Agenda Is Reprogramming America | WIRED - President Trump's anti-DEI playbook doesn't just affect the makeup of America's workplaces. It also impacts cultural production.

Opinion | Sorry, R.F.K.: There Is No Autism Mystery - The New York Times - I Was Diagnosed With Autism at 53. I Know Why Rates Are Rising.

VeloPlanner - From EuroVelo to national cycling networks, VeloPlanner puts the world's official, signposted routes in one place. Download GPX files, access detailed route information, and plan your next ride with confidence.

The Last Decision by the World’s Leading Thinker on Decisions | wsj.com - ## Shortly before Daniel Kahneman died last March, he emailed friends a message: He was choosing to end his own life in Switzerland. Some are still struggling with his choice.

Literary Locomotives: Nine Books Set on Trains That Show How They Changed the World ‹ Literary Hub - Why set a novel on a train? The answer might seem obvious: it’s a narratively and atmospherically rich space, an enclosure in which strangers are cooped up, each with their own different reason for making the journey.

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Thankfully, the back roads still have a plentiful supply of old farm houses to provide for my photographic needs.

I think I have reached the stage where i no longer have to do anything to relax. It's become status quo for me. I rarely have to deal with anyone who brings tension to my life these days. If someone starts to do that, I can easily elect to find an alternative source of humanity. Luckily, I'm not related to anyone who stresses me out. I generally wake up in a good mood and wait for the day to get even better.

The pre-dawn hours are some of the best of any day. It's quiet. Coffee tastes better than than it does at any other time. I can spend a leisurely amount of time going through the ritual I've developed. The first thing I do is open my journal and do a quick once-over of the stuff that gets automatically imported there. Then I review "on this day." I've been using the same app, Day One, for 11 years, so I have plenty to look back over. Today's interesting entries were from 2020 when I wrote quite a bot about how weird it was during the early days of the pandemic, when grocery store shelves were empty and people were panic buying. After my journal, I move on to do the same thing with my photographs, which are liberally sprinkled with photos of my grandkids at all different ages. Only after doing all that, do I take a look at the daily fire hose of WTF, also known as the headlines. As horrible as things are, I am doing a good job of depersonalizing it.

I'm a believer in creating happy spaces. My little home office is pleasantly lit. Everything is suitably comfortable. I can listen to music if I feel like it or watch something, which I rarely do, but can if it suits me. I always have a tasty beverage on hand. I may have to work on making my workspace a little less relaxing because taking a nap with my laptop has become a new pastime. How delightful to be able to just surrender to every urge to get 40 winks. I keep meaning to start using an essential oil diffuser that I used to keep running all the time for just a little more feng shui.

I have a great view from my window. I'll be moving my bird feeders to where I can see them better. My house borders on a stretch of woodlands. My neighborhood was built in the 60s, and we have many established, mature trees around. I see all kinds of wildlife, from squirrels, to rabbits, raccoons, and opossums, as well as a long list of birds: cardinals, wrens, house finches, titmice, blue jays, catbirds, chickadees, goldfinches, owls, red tail hawks, crows, sparrows, robins, orioles and more.

During my earlier years, I didn't always have the money to have a smoothly working climate control system. I spent too may years relying on expensive space heaters and window units. Not now buddy. I can adjust the temperature to whatever I want right from my phone or computer. It's such a luxury. My high school years were spent in a 100-year-old farmhouse with no air conditioning and heat from a wood stove. I survived just fine, but, man, I love these new fangled devices.

My days are spent now working on projects that interest me. I read what I want to read. My biggest energy consumption is finding ways to be creative, not trying to calm people frustrated by technology that isn't acting as it should. I haven't had to reset anyone's password in over a month. A professional lifetime where every day was a confrontation with things that didn't work has been supplanted by my lovingly tended little home tech environment where just about everything that happens to predictable and expected. That's the life for me.

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When I am laying on my deathbed, counting my regrets, one of them will be that I didn't go see Bruce Springsteen in the 80s or 90s. By the time the 21st century rolled around, I was done with concerts for big names. There just isn't any way I'm going to pay a hundred dollars an hour to be entertained. That doesn't take away from my enjoyment of music. I'm glad that Bruce and other senior citizens like Sir Paul McCartney are still performing live for the people who want to see them and don't mind parting with the dough.

I started listening to Springsteen when I was 14, in 1979 when he released the double-album, The River, still one of my favorites. A couple of years later when Nebraska came out, I became a fan for life. That sparse record, recorded on a four-track machine in Springsteen;s basement is my nomination for the perfect album in the canon.

My respect and admiration for The Boss comes from a variety of elements. I think he is a master of the English language, a people's poet if there ever was one. He was not, as he was once labeled, the next Dylan. He was just the first Bruce. Those songs from The River and Nebraska carried me into adulthood in the very spirit of the late 70s and early 80s. Springsteen's musical knowledge ad skill, coupled with his respect for people like Woodie Guthrie and Pete Seeger, mean a lot to me. His admiration of those men speaks to his values and mine.

I don't think he's perfect, by any means. He's made mistakes. His first marriage was rocky. He didn't always treat the guys in his band with the respect they deserve. By his own admission, he has a pretty outsized ego, but JFC, so would I if I were Bruce Springsteen. As artists go, he's just someone who makes music that speaks to me and has for decades.

Home | Bruce Springsteen

The Perfect Album | Living Out Loud

Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska by Warren Zanes | Goodreads

Born to Run (autobiography) - Wikipedia

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I recently crowd-sourced ideas for a better way to catalog, annotate and search my collected PDFs, mainly software and hardware user manuals with a few odds and ends thrown in. The top suggestions were:

• Zotero - the app I chose
• DevonThink - expensive when all I want is PDF searches
• Eagle Filer - what I've been using, but I want something that is native to Apple silicon, works on IOS and is lightweight as a way to search PDFs only
• Paperless-ngx - Interesting, but requires Docker
• Obsidia - not suitable because the plugin required for text searched creates too many support files

Zotero

I chose Zotero, because it's free, lightweight and offers an iOS app using the same data. Zotero can import multiple files at once. It has built in tools for highlighting and making annotations to PDFs. There are numerous plugins available, including:

• AutoIndex - Keeps the full-text index updated. Beta release. If you have ZotFile installed, Auto-index will also kick off auto-extraction of notes.
• PDF Translate - Provides PDF translation for the built-in PDF reader in Zotero
• PDF Preview - Preview Zotero attachments in the library view.
• Zutilo - Adds additional editing functions and exposes Zotero functions for keyboard shortcuts

Zotero is designed to  to manage bibliographic data and related research materials, something for which I have little use. I can however use its browser import tools and added ability to add epub and HTMS archives to my research library. It is compatible with SingleFile, an open-source project for saving HTML archives of web pages. Zotero allows you to attach notes to PDFs, retrieve their metadata and other tasks. You can organize PDFs in folders and collections. The Zotero website provides extensive information, including instructional screencasts, troubleshooting tips, a list of known issues, and user forums.

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Charlotte street scene

Garden of the Gods in the Spring Snow, near Colorado Springs

The title of this blog post is aspirational. One of my goals in life is to make up for my shortcomings as a father by being the best grandfather I can be. I also tried to be the best Dad I could be, but I feel more prepared at this stage in my life to succeed than I did in my younger days. One of the primary benefits of having been a teenage parent was the head start it gave me on becoming a grandfather. The oldest of my grandchildren will turn 20 this year, while the youngest two are just in kindergarten. There are 13 of them all together. It plays hell at Christmastime, not that I do much of the shopping. Wonder Woman handles that. About all I do is bring the packages in from the porch and accept hugs from the kiddos after they open them.

I've got several of the kids on my mind today. I've been assembling the gear for a weekend camping trip with five of them, ranging from five-year old Evie to 14-year-old Aiden. Despite the threat of a cold night on Saturday, we have gathered our tents, sleeping bags, flashlights and cooking gear to head for Jones Lake State Park for the weekend. I've gotten everyone's favorite camping food, s'mores fixings and a massive charger for all their electronics. Harper, my aspiring TikTok superstar, will surely be making videos while hanging out with her cousins in the woods. Wonder Woman will be in charge, of course. We got them all fishing poles last fall, so that's definitely going to be on their itinerary.

My other kindergarten grandchild is James. He lives a couple of hours away. He's eight years younger than his sister. He'd been with the same group of kids in pre-school for several years but unfortunately, none of them ended up going to the same elementary school he attends. It threw him for a loop and this hasn't been an easy year for him because of it. It really breaks my heart to see him struggling with the social aspect of the school experience so early. He's a bright boy, so the academic part of the experience is going OK, I just want him to make some friends to enrich the experience. Thankfully, his folks aren't planning on moving, so he will have the stability to get to know his classmates as time goes on.

One of my other grandsons, Connor, is a high-school junior. He has an illness called Friedreich's Ataxia that affects his mobility. He drives a car with hand controls and uses a motorized wheelchair at school. Furthermore, he can walk some, but his illness makes it difficult. With the destruction of the Department of Education by the fascists in Washington, coupled with the undercover attack on the disabled as part of diversity, equity and inclusion programs, we do not know what is going to happen to the services he gets. To make it all even more infuriating, his Dad, our son-in-law, is a 100% disabled vet from injuries sustained in an IED explosion in Afghanistan. We don't know what's going to happen with his Veteran's Administration healthcare and services, either. My anger at the Republicans who wave flags and enable this bullshit is very, very personal. Whatever happens, Wonder Woman and I will be there for them.

I'm glad I have all of these people to love. I may not be the world's best Granddad yet, but I will continue to work toward being that man.

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One of the first steps in troubleshooting a misbehaving Mac for many years has been to repair the disk permissions, currently a feature of Disk First Aid, accessed through Disk Utility or the terminal if you are savvy. That can be a bit of overkill if you are primarily concerned with a single file, folder or app, though. it's time consuming and affects your entire drive.

If you have files, folders or apps that cannot be opened or files that refuse to have changes saved to them, there is a free tool that can quickly solve the issue if it is permission related. Permissions Reset 2 from Taiwanese developers  Ohanaware can reset the owner, group, access permissions, Access Control Lists (ACLS), Extended Attributes (including Quarantine) to default settings, simply by dragging an app, folder or file into Permissions Reset, selecting what you'd like reset, then clicking on "Reset".

The app requires macOS 10.13 or newer and is compatible with Sequoia, although it has not been updated since 2021. . If you are familiar with the binary and reversible nature of disk permissions, this shouldn't give you pause. It isn't Apple Silicon native, so if you don't want to use Rosetta, then this isn't for you. If you get anxiety if your apps aren't updated every 15 minutes, then this probably isn't for you either.

You can download the app from the developer's website.

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Aberdeen and Rockfish Railroad near Raeford, NC

These are the places I go online to interact with other folks. If you are not familiar with any of these places, maybe you can check them out.

My Mastodon Server

I am a big fan on the community at OMG.LOL and its Mastodon server, Social.lol, which requires that you have an OMG.LOL account. There is also a Discord community and a Signal group.

Discord

I am a member of several communities on Discord My favorites are : Obsidian.md, OMG.LOL, MacApps,

AppRaven

AppRaven is a community based around the iOS app of the same name. It's for people who like to discover new Mac and iOS apps,

Forums

I have a tom of forum accounts, mostly for software. The most helpful are Obsidian, Drafts, Keyboard Maestro

Reddit

My favorite communities on Reddit are r/MacApps, r/ObsidianMD and r/MacOS

BearBlog Discover

A great place to get to know bloggers is on BearBlog's Discover Page.

Scribbles

The new posts on the Scribbles platform are on the Explore Page

Micro.Blog

Did you know that you can get an account at Micro.blog for $1 month?

Others

I’m on Bluesky if you want to hook up there. I’m also on Pixelfed. Let’s Connect

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Setapp is an app subscription service ($9.99 a month) owned by the Ukrainian company Macpaw. It has approximately 1 million subscribers, which is a good testament to its usefulness. Here are some of the things I've learned in a year and half of being a customer.

Unfortunately, Macpaw is a frequent target of Russian trolls because of the ongoing war between the two countries. Macpaw also makes the utility suite, CleanMyMac, which some people confuse with an older Mac malware program, MacKeeper. The two are not related. If you read the tech press, you'll see good reviews of Setapp. If you rely on Reddit or anonymous online sources, you are likely to run into those pesky Russians I mentioned.

I get tremendous value from my Setapp subscription. The numbers fluctuate a bit, but I currently have 42 apps from the service installed. More than a dozen of those apps are login items that are always running on my Mac. Obviously, they play a vital part in my workflow.

Anyone can try Setapp and all of its app for free for seven days, however if you use my referral link and code PLUMMER you will get 30 days free instead of seven. Also if you are a student, you are eligible for Setapp at 50% off. And, finally, anyone who pays by the year gets a 10% discount.

One tip I can offer is to get your own API key from Open.AI for use with AI apps like Typing Mind or Elephas. It is much cheaper. In a year of constantly using my API with multiple apps, I've spent $15.

If you have any apps from Setapp that you have already purchased, consider using the Setapp version while you have a subscription since it adds to the money that the developer make. It's just a nice thing to do. Brett Terpstra wrote a script and an automator workflow that will tell you if any of the apps on your computer are also on Setapp.

One last thing - I tried the iOS add-on and didn't get that much from it. I do have the add-on to run the apps on a second machine though. It doesn't add that much and it comes in handy.

Here's a List of the Login Apps I Use

• PopClip - A Must Have Productivity App | AppAddict
• Bartender - Still Best in Class | AppAddict
• AlDente Pro - Charge Limiter | AppAddict
• 24 Hour Wallpaper from Jetson Creative | AppAddict
• Better Touch Tool Favorites | AppAddict
• CleanShot X | AppAddict
• Clop - Copy Big, Paste Small, Send Fast | AppAddict
• Dato - A Full Featured Menu Bar Calendar | AppAddict
• Default Folder X an OG App For Mac Power Users | AppAddict
• Disk Drill Revisited - Recovering 87K Files | AppAddict
• Dropzone 4 - A Little Pricey But Versatile | AppAddict
• QuitAll - Amico Apps
• Start from Innovative Bytes | AppAddict

Other Setapp Offerings I Have Reviewed

• Permute - Powerful, Easy to Use Media Converter for Images, Video and Audio | AppAddict
• TripMode - Data Usage Monitor and Control | AppAddict
• Downie - Video Downloader | AppAddict
• Trickster - Manage Your Files Like a Pro | AppAddict
• TextSniper | AppAddict
• Unclutter - Clipboard Manager, File Shelf, Floating Notes - All in One | AppAddict
• MarsEdit - Making Blogging Easier | AppAddict
• SnapMotion - High Quality Image Captures from Video, Made Easy | AppAddict
• Presentify - An App for the Future | AppAddict
• Elephas Did What Others Wouldn't | AppAddict
• Keysmith - Record Automation Macros With Ease | AppAddict
• Noizio - A Background Sound App for Mac | AppAddict
• Widget Wall | AppAddict
• Almighty - Tweaking and Utility Collection | AppAddict
• Paletro - Add a Command Palette to Any App | AppAddict
• Unite 5 and Coherence X 4 - Site Specific Browsers | AppAddict
• An Unemotional Look at Clean My Mac X | AppAddict
• Plus AI from MacPlus - A Convenient and Well Though Out App | AppAddict
• Pie Menu | AppAddict
• Pathfinder by Cocoatech | AppAddict

Full list of apps on Setapp, listed by popularity

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When I bought my first computer in 1993, an IBM PS1 Consultant, 486/33SX, it had a 140 MB hard drive. I kept the computer for three years, and although I added a CD-ROM, sound card and extra RAM, I never increased the amount of storage. A quick check of the computer I use today, an M2 MacBook Air reveals that I have 78 apps that take up more storage by themselves than I had available on that first computer. My camera, a Canon 6D takes photos so large that six of them would have filled the hard drive of that first computer.

I still have documents I created on that machine. In fact, I have a great many things I wrote and preserved from the 1990s, including digital photos from the expensive Kodak camera that belonged to my job. Many of the documents were written in Microsoft Works, a productivity suite it stopped selling 16 years ago. There was never a Mac version of it. At some point, I had to jump through some hoops to recover the information from those files using a document interpreter. These days, I save everything I write as plain text so that I don't ever face that problem again. I did not save everything I wrote from that era, but I was able to use The Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive to recover numerous web pages from my first blog.

When Napster was popular, you could download almost any song you could think of just by searching for it. I accumulated all 500 of the Rolling Stones top albums that way. While I was still living that pirate life, a short time actually, I also collected the full discographies of several prolific artists and groups and that's why I have 25+ albums (each) by Neil Young, Van Morrison, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, and Bob Dylan.

In setting up my new home office recently, I rounded up the embarrassingly large collection of hard drives I'd accumulated over the years: 7 portable 1 TB drives, 2 portable 2 TB drives, 2 powered external 1 TB drives, 5 internal 1 TB drives and 2 powered external 3 TB hard drives. That's 24 TB of storage added to the 5 TB that I have available on the computers I use daily. The drives contained various collections of software, photos, music, podcasts, movies, TV shows, hard drive back-ups and documents collected over the past 30+ years.

I recently added over a thousand more files to keep up with when I downloaded our entire Amazon Kindle and Audible collections. We had over 500 books in each of those. My challenge is to consolidate all of that information, removing duplicates as I go along. My goal is to have a local copy, a copy kept offsite but readily available and a copy in the cloud. A lot of this information is only important to me. My kids will probably preserve the photos and may avail themselves of some music, but who will want an archive of decades of my writing? If you ask them, they'd most likely says yes, but it is a lot of work to maintain so many files and like all 21st century people, their collections of digital data are growing too.

My decision to create a home lab made things even more complicated since now I have three computers to maintain and a fluctuating number of virtual machines. This means I have a half dozen large USB thumb drives with operating system installations on them. Yay! More data! Having high-speed Internet also allows me to suck information off the internet at an outrageous rate. I can download dozens of GB of data in a morning if I feel like it, and of course, I often feel like it. I don't know for sure, but I suspect there may be a diagnosis associated with my personality type.

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Street photographer, Jay Maisel, owned the famous 190 Bowery building, a six-story, 72-room building in Manhattan to which the sticker was affixed. He lived and worked there for several decades before selling it in 2015.

Every so often in my adult life, I find a new passion. I'm not happy until I master it or come as close as I can. I've done it over a wide array of activities, cycling, photography, long-distance hiking, political activism and now blogging, I suppose. Based on all that, I know I have the capacity to learn new things. I am still curious. There are some areas of my life, where I'm not sure how to incorporate new things. The arts are a good example of this. I do not remember the last time I listened to an album by someone with whom I wasn't familiar. I used to get new music all the time but these days I am very much my own classic rock radio station. I'd like to discover some rabbit hole of a TV series to dive into. I'm in a rut of moving from one Netflix or Max new release to another one (with some Britbox thrown in). I have so much time now but I'm at a loss for ways to find new things. Time to do some research.

7 Ways To Expand Your Horizon And Push For New Frontiers - LifeHack

Top Recommended Websites To Discover New Music In 2025

6 Easy Ways to Find the Streaming Movies and Shows You Want to Watch | PCMag

17 Ways To Find Good Books To Read - Cushing-Malloy

Too Many Places: Overcoming the Paradox of Choice

I'm in the process of removing my data from most of the big US based tech companies in favor or smaller, more privacy focused companies. I do not want my files to be subject to US government subpoenas or other invasive security threats from which Google, Amazon, Meta or Microsoft can profit. I've downloaded my photo backups from Amazon and Google, made local backups and set up a self hosted photo server. I will also be using Ente, a data storage provider using E2E open-source software.

When downloading my stored photos, I am dealing with cell phone photos, scanned images, DSLR photos and downloaded Internet images. The files from cell phones and cameras contain EXIF data. The scans and Internet files do not. To set the file creation date to match the EXIF data, I used A Better Finder Attributes. by PublicSpaces.

To rename the files so that they file name matches or contains the date the photo was taken, I am using Transnomino, a free file renaming utility that offers renaming based on factors as simple as text replacement to complex replacements based on regular expressions and text-based file attributes.

For dealing with large amounts of zipped archives, I'm using Better Zip because of it's feature that allows you to save workflows that unarchive the files in a variety of locations. It also deals with archive errors better than other utilities that aren't really designed for queued files operations. Better Zip also provides a Quicklook plugin that allows me to see the contents of archives without having to open them.

To sort the files (there are over 100,000), I'm using Hazel which is easily able to separate the videos from the still images. It then moves the files based on the creation date to a folder named for the month and year the image was captured. If the folder does not exist, it creates it.

To move and copy the huge volume of files I'm dealing with, I am using RsyncUI, a graphical front end for the powerful CLI program, rsync.

To view the local files on my Mac, I am definitely NOT using Apple Photos. Right now I am using the free app, XnViewMP, but I am preparing to set up Musebox a one-time purchase app ($15). with capabilities similar to Lightoom.

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White Headed Mouse Bird, native to East Africa #Birds

One thing I learned prior to traveling to Ireland is that the people of that country grow really and truly tired of Americans (meaning people who were born and raised in the United States) coming over to the Emerald Isle and proclaiming themselves to be Irish because one of their 32 great-great-great-great grandfathers was from County Cork. I made it very clear to any of the Irish people I spoke to that I was not one of "those" Americans. One fellow couldn't believe that I wasn't trying to claim to be his long lost cousin. I explained that my grandmother was of Scottish descent. He asked me her family name. "McFadyen," I told him. He assumed a triumphant look and led me to a monument located right beside the famous Free Derry wall. The monument was to a man whose last name was, you guessed it, McFadyen. He told me that I might not claim Ireland but that Ireland would claim me.

Honestly, I don't really care that much where any of my long dead relatives came from in the sense that i just can't identify with national pride. It's seldom a good thing is it? It leads to nationalism and feelings and acts of unearned and undeserved superiority. I'm fine with other folks who feel some sort of spiritual kinship with the home of their ancestors, as long as they aren't obnoxious about it. Just don't tell me that you know you'd be good at bullfighting because you have Spanish blood or any kind crap like that.

As a general rule, most cultures have two sides. For every selfless act of sacrifice, there tends to be a corresponding act of something horrible. Even the Irish, a people I hold in high esteem for persevering under years of exploitive English colonialism, seldom talk about their Nazi sympathies. Wait, what? Well, after Irish independence, certain folks decided that any enemy of England was a friend of Ireland and well, that kind of led to a certain acceptance of Germany that was most underserved. Read about it in the Irish Times

The heroic American Army of World War Two had soldiers stationed in America guarding their fellow citizens in Japanese Internment Camps. That doesn't take away anything from the men who landed on Omaha Beach, it just solidifies the fact that it's a very grey world, no matter how black and white we wish it could be.

For my fellow pale skinned brethren, expressing something as warped as racial pride is just weird AF to me. Thankfully, the tendency of white people to express that notion was on the decline prior to the last election, although it seems to be making a comeback. I can see where traditionally oppressed people have a sense of "Yay! We survived!" but I'm not sure what their genocidal oppressors have to celebrate. Don't even come at me with an "But not all white people" argument either.

I am much more inclined to identify with my self-chosen tribe of freedom fighters. I celebrate my people based on what they did and not on geography or the amount of melanin in their skin or the shape of their eyes. Our real families are the people we choose and not the blood in our veins. My people were the abolitionists, the Freedom Riders, the IWW and the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. My people were Susan B. Anthony, Fannie Lou Hamer, Fred Korematsu and Sitting Bull. My people started Occupy Wall Street and rioted in the streets of Seattle. They were gunned down at Kent State by the Ohio NationalGuard and in a Greensboro housing project by the KKK. My people are finding ways to resist the tide of fascism right this red hot minute.

If you feel the same way, then you are my sister or my brother. I love you.

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If you haven't noticed the US government's full court press to assert the supremacy of whiteness in this country, you're probably white and conservative. The whole MAGA movement is predicated about returning to a time when white people reigned supreme over the cultural and economic realms of the country.

I find the whole concept of race to be an artificial construct, useful only to a dominant group who wants to draw lines between themselves and others, mostly to keep the others from assuming any privilege or availing themselves of perceived scarce resources. The whole notion of whiteness is fluid. There was a time when Irish and Italians were not considered white. Plenty of mouth-breathers still consider anyone who is Jewish to be ineligible for whiteness, the same with other Semitic people and for Spanish speakers.

If you spend more than thirty seconds thinking about race, it starts to become evident that it's only purpose is to keep people separate. One of the favorite beliefs among the Silicon Valley eugenics fans is the supposed differences in the IQ among the races. Guess who they believe to be #1.

Spend a little time looking at the arguments against using race to draw lines.

How the Irish Became White by Noel Ignatiev | Goodreads

Eugenics Isn’t Dead—It’s Thriving in Tech – Mother Jones

Race Is a Social Construct, Scientists Argue | Scientific American

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After using Gmail for twenty years, I recently decided to move to a more privacy focused provider I could use with my own domain. I've finally reached the tipping point with surrendering my data to big tech in exchange for free services.

I chose Fastmail as my new provider. Fastmail works with just about any email client available. I don't need or want AI capabilities, nor do I have any complicated workflows for email. I use my account purely for personal communications and as a repository for subscriptions. It doesn't make sense for me to use a paid or subscription app for those basic needs, so I opted for a free Fastmail client, Fmail2. This tiny app (8MB) replicates the excellent Fastmail web client and adds a number of features.

• Multiple window support
• Default email client
• Running in the background
• Auto hide
• Tabs
• Dock item with badge
• Swipe support
• Secure
• Notifications
• Status bar menu
• Keyboard shortcuts

There were several reasons I chose Fastmail from among other options.

• Import of mail, calendar, notes, contacts and filters from Gmail
• Label support (folders are also an option)
• Robust SPAM filters
• 50GB of storage - 20 years of Gmail only used 8GB, so I think I'll be fine with 50GB on Fastmail
• Unlimited alias addresses
• Unlimited masked email addresses
• Ongoing import of Gmail
• Discount for family plan

Fmail2 is a 100% Swift app and runs natively on apple silicon. The developer is Arie van Boxel, who is also behind the excellent Startup Manager app.

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Sometimes being online is absolutely like panning for gold. I can be perusing one of the blogging platforms I frequent and discover the most heart touching essay by someone i've never encountered before. They could be writing about anything, a relationship, or work or just anything about surviving life in 2025. When I find someone like that, it brightens my day and gives me something to look forward to. I felt that way when I found Keenan and Annie.

There are times when even a well done commercial site providing high-quality content is a joy to spend time on there. The Atlantic or The Verge or Wired on a good day are prime examples. I happen to like and respect quite a few journalists. Some of them are doing some absolutely vital work for our democracy right now, and i appreciate it. I also like the tech nerds, who I can tell are just as excited to find an interesting new tool as I would be in their shoes. After all these years, I still think computers can be fun. I'm not jaded yet.

But.

But then... I log on to Mastodon or Bluesky and I see a message in my inbox, not from some software curious Mac fan, but from an incredibly attractive woman, appearing younger than my adult kids, who is just dying to find out how I'm doing tonight. Sigh. It only takes a minute to block and delete those kind of scam messages. They are such downers, though. There's some lonely guy out there, maybe someone who isn't as sharp mentally as they once were who is going to fall for that kind of thing tonight. He will get taken to the cleaners and have his heart broken. I don't like the constant reminders of that reality.

Other times, I'm just doing my thing, minding my own business and I get a text message, which is cool if it is a friend or our kids or grandkids. What's not cool is when it's someone from the political party I don't support crowing about the latest MAGA atrocity as if it's a good thing and asking me to send them money.

Lately, I've voluntarily been extricating myself from my involvement with the websites of the billionaire class. It's not a project to be taken on lightly. It changes the Internet, injecting friction into areas where I am not used to it. I have to think instead of using muscle memory. Having a new email address for the first time in 20 years is disconcerting. Leaving Facebook was absolutely the right thing to do, but I miss the people from my old job and high school friends I only saw on there. For years, I've been able to watch whatever blockbuster show I wanted because subscribing to ALL the streaming services wasn't that expensive. Now, having a moral code is giving me FOMO. What if something superb comes on Amazon Prime after my divorce from Jeff Bezos goes through? I hate the thought.

It's been a good weekend. I got to spend a few hours with my oldest friend today. Wonder Woman and I wrapped a good British TV show. I have a couple of trips to look forward to, And, I am still retired.

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My wife and I are in the process of detangling ourselves from four of the biggest tech companies: Meta, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. Of those four, Amazon is the most firmly entrenched in our lives since the company, and it's owner without a soul, billionaire Jeff Bezos provide various services we use, forcing us to find alternatives in several different areas.

News

We dumped our subscription to the Washington Post during the 2024 election when Bezos, the owner of the newspaper, compelled the editorial department to kill its endorsement of the Harris/Walz ticket. While there are some quality journalists working at the paper, Bezos recently became even more involved with editorial policy, making it more pro-MAGA. We took the money we were spending on the Post and the New York Times and used it to support

• ProPublica — Investigative Journalism and News in the Public Interest
• Joan Westenberg.
• Democracy Now! | Democracy Now!

eBooks

We've been ebook readers since shortly after the Kindle was released. We no longer use Kindle devices to read on, opting for our iPads these days, but we've purchased over 500 titles for the platform from Amazon. I recently downloaded all those files, removed the DRM and converted the files to epub format. Going forward, we will use the following stores and our technical skills to make our eBook purchases available to us on whatever platform we choose.

• eBooks.com: Buy Fiction, Non-Fiction, and Textbooks Online
• Smashwords
• eBooks | Rakuten Kobo

Audiobooks

Although you can still download audiobooks purchased from the Amazon owned Audible company, the day may come where you are prevented from doing that. I used a free tool to download and convert another 500+ books using Libation - Audiobook Downloader and Converter. I used the Mac app, Permute, to convert some older audiobooks I had downloaded from an account to which I no longer had access. Going forward, we will use these sources for audiobooks instead of Audible.

• Audiobooks.com
• Chirp | A Better Way to Audiobook
• Libro.fm, Your Independent Bookstore for Digital Audiobooks | Libro.fm

Television

While Amazon Prime Video has had many shows we've enjoyed, our primary use of the service has been as a conduit to British television via Britbox and Acorn TV. Luckily for us, both of those services have app for the AppleTV, the streaming device we use.

• BritBox: The Best British TV on the App Store
• Acorn TV: Brilliant Hit Series on the App Store

Photographs

We have nearly a terabyte of photos and videos uploaded to Amazon's servers and they don;t make it easy to download them, limiting individual downloads to 200 images at the time. Just to get our photos from the single year of 2014 required 96 separate downloads. Never again. Once I finish getting all the files onto my drive, I will be using an end-to-end encrypted service with servers in Europe to store my photos in the cloud. It also has automatic uploads of iPhone photos, just like Amazon and Google, another place we are leaving.

Ente - Private cloud storage for your photos, videos and more

Shopping

We've found that we can get better deals on products these days by shopping around vs. just buying from Amazon. A couple of examples are the companies Wonder Woman uses for her sports nutrition products and her running shoes.

• Food for Athletes ⚡ #1 Sports Nutrition Store for performance boosting fuel, hydration, gear and more.
• The Best Running Shoes and Gear | Road Runner Sports
  
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When it comes to Mac utilities, there are things that are helpful to have, but that are not absolutely required. Many of the "nice to have" features can be gained through installing various free, well regarded applications. For people who don't want the hassle of assembling a toolkit piece by piece, there are apps like Sensei by Cindori Software, for optimization and information.

Sensei Features vs. Free Alternatives

• Hardware monitoring of CPU, GPU, RAM, temps, storage and battery. A free alternative is Stats
• Cleaning of old caches, logs, big downloads and leftover installation files. A free alternative is Onyx
• Uninstalling apps. If you just throw apps into the trash, which was once the accepted way to perform uninstallations, you can potentially leave behind GBs of files in ~/Library subfolders. Intelligent uninstallers locate and remove those files. Free alternatives are AppCleaner and Pear Cleaner
• Monitor hard drive health, Drive failures can sometimes be predicted, giving you time to back your data and replace your drive. A free alternative is Disk Drill.
• Battery Health. Batteries degrade over time and depending on how long you keep a laptop, may need to be replaced. Utilities like Sensei can tell you how much of your battery's orininal capacity is still viable. A free alternative is Coconut Battery.
• Drive benchmarking - measuring the speed of your hard drive isn't necessarily helpful for commercial software, but some special use cases require higher speeds. A free alternative is Blackmagic Disk Speed Test
• Startup analyzer - you may have more apps running in the background or at startup than your realize. I recently found five Microsoft remnants that didn't get uninstalled when I got rid of Microsoft 365. A fee alternative is Startup Manager.

Sensei is a subscription app that costs $29 a year for a license that covers three Macs. A similar product, CleanMyMac, by MacPaw, is included in Setapp.

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My journal prompt today was to find my favorite photo of myself. This is a picture my wife took of me on our honeymoon.

Greenfield Park, Wilmington, NC

Our house is a quiet one. Our neighborhood is quiet. Neither me not Wonder Woman have loud voices normally, although we do occasionally get excited. My kids follow my lead on this. My son doesn't even have a TV and although, like me, he loves music and has a large collection, he enjoys nothing more than sitting in silence with a book. My daughter does have a TV, but it isn't on much. She has a six-year-old who can be a little rambunctious, but generally, it's a calm home.

Although Wonder Woman is like me, the rest of her family is not. Her girls and her parents like having a TV on in the background. The grandkids are all big gamers so you get those sounds too. My Dad is another person who gets nervous without a TV on in the background. He turns one on just as soon as he wakes up, and it stays on all day, either on Fox News or sports, although he does enjoy the odd YouTube video from time to time. It doesn't bother me, but I'm usually ready for quiet when we go home.

When we have grandkids over for a visit, I know that it will be louder than normal. I am OK with that. I may occasionally ask one of them to use headphones or to turn the volume down on their video game or tablet, but I don't make them feel bad about it or walk on eggshells. I wasn't always that cool about it, though. I've grown more flexible about that with age.

One of my greatest traveling anxieties is being trapped in a loud hotel. I've left more than one in the middle of the night because I just couldn't handle the racket and the staff's inability to do anything about it. I may have even yelled at the noisemakers, a group from a ski trip who came rolling in loud at midnight. I just don't understand the mentality of people who are not volume aware.

Camping in a group campground brings on the same feeling. Breaking out a boom box and serenading people who may have different taste in music or who might want to, I don't know, hear the birds sing is just pure rude. Getting drunk and talking loud around a campfire past the "quiet hour" is another sure sign of low intelligence and poor home training. I also consider hiking spaces to be close to sacred. When some trail runner with a Bluetooth speaker comes blasting by, I want to trip them. Then kick them.

For years, one of my hobbies was downloading, listening to and rating music. I'd sit at my computer for long stretches happily tagging songs, reading reviews of albums and making wish lists of songs or albums I wanted to get. Streaming took the joy out of that, and I rarely add anything new anymore, unless it is an album by an artist I already like. If I am home alone, I'll play music while I cook or clean house, but apart from that, it's quiet.

Oddly, I can write in the noisiest locations. I am perfectly fine to work on my blog on a car trip while a podcast plays in the background. Writing on a plane is no problem. Before I retired, i'd often write at work during my lunch break, with the usual office sounds going on around me. I get aggravated in loud restaurants if i am can't have a conversation with my companions, but it is that fact and not the noise itself which I find grating.

My idea of heaven is sitting on the deck of a cabin up in the Appalachian Mountains, preferable beside a stream on a mild day with a cold beverage and something good to read. That's the spot I go to in my mind when I am trying to relax when tense.

Oh, and leaf blowers suck.

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Today I downloaded and tested an app that's been on my radar for a while, SiteSucker for Mac by developer Rick Cranisky.. You can give this app a top level URL, specify how many layers deep you want to go and it will download an entire web site, complete with supporting files like images and style sheets. It has regex filters for anything you want to exclude. After I ran it the first time, I read the error log and excluded the site that was causing issues and it ran much better after that. SiteSucker has been under continuous development since the birth of Mac OX in 2001.

The version available in the App Store is $4.99. It does not downloaded embedded videos. To get that feature you need to download the pro version of the app from the developer's website. Be prepared to an extra $1 for the pro version. The developer states :

"SiteSucker Pro is an enhanced version of SiteSucker that can download embedded videos, including embedded YouTube, Vimeo, WordPress, and Wistia videos. SiteSucker Pro can also download sites from the Tor network. You can try SiteSucker Pro for up to 14 days before you buy it. During that period, the application is fully functional except that you can download no more than 100 files at a time."

When I ran SiteSuckker against one of my blogs, it created a copy of the website on my hard drive that was indistinguishable from the site hosted by my provider. The internal links were pointed to the local files downloaded, while the external links still pointed to the Internet. I had a couple of external links that generated downloads of huge XML files, in one case 375MBs of them. There are reports from some users that they've filled up all the available hard drive space by changing the default settings and not monitoring the download. Don't do that!

You can create default settings or save the settings for different websites as individual files you can open if you wish to re-download a copy of a site.

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A late winter sky over Sweetwater State Park outside Atlanta.

I am still trying to get used to my parents as elderly/senior/old. Both of them were born in 1947 (does math) which means they will turn 78 this year. They are long divorced, so my relationship with them isn't a joint one. My Mom has been a widow since 2008. My Dad has been married to my step-mom for 43 years. Wonder Woman's wonderful parents are also still kicking. Her mom just turned 80 and her dad is 85.

Mom is exceptionally healthy. She's always eaten well and taken care of herself. She exercises regularly. And, she assures me frequently, she's only had two glasses of wine since Christmas, which is a likely story, but she doesn't have any alcohol related issues.

My Dad has had three or four heart attacks, numerous stints and coronary bypass surgery. An Army helicopter pilot, he had to quit flying in the 80s because of his blood pressure. He walks with a cane these days and not very far.

I've gotten good, personalized advice from kind people on the Internet about being an asset to my folks in the struggles we are all going to face as we age. It's a topic that isn't alwats fun to research, but I think it's better to do it electively, than to wait until panic strikes.

50 Things to do with elderly parents

Complete List of Things to Do for Elderly Parents

Ageing parents need help? 6 things you can do

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“Taxi ”stars reunite to pay tribute to castmate Danny DeVito more than 40 years after show's end - Tony Danza, Marilu Henner, Judd Hirsch, Carol Kane, and Christopher Lloyd met up to watch their former costar Danny DeVito accept the Jason Robards Award for Excellence in Theater at the Roundabout Theatre Company's gala at the Ziegfeld Ballroom in New York City. The show's cocreator, James L. Brooks, also attended

‘No, I’m not phoning to say I’m dying!’ My gruelling week of calling gen Z friends rather than texting them - Of those aged 18 to 34 – 61% prefer a text to a call, and 23% never bother answering

Analytics transformed sports. Has it also made them less entertaining? - The Washington Post - The "Moneyball" era changed how teams play, coach and are built. But the quest for efficiency is increasingly being blamed for robbing sports of their beauty.

Five Books - Expert Book Recommendations - The best books on every subject

30 Charts That Show How Everything Changed in March 2020 - The New York Times - Decades from now, the pandemic will be visible in the historical data of nearly anything measurable today: an unmistakable spike, dip or jolt that officially began for Americans five years ago this month.

The 100 Best Sports Moments of the Quarter Century - The Ringer - When the impossible becomes possible, when the definition of absurd is redefined, when men and women turn into superheroes—you don’t easily forget something like that.

Book Review: ‘Careless People,’ by Sarah Wynn-Williams - The New York Times - The publisher of "Careless People" kept the existence of this memoir a secret until a few days ago — with good reason, it turns out. For seven years, beginning in 2011, the book's author, Sarah Wynn-Williams, worked at Facebook (now called Meta), eventually as a director of global public policy.

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My daughter got married about 100 yards down the beach from this pier on the weekend before Memorial Day in 2006..

Some people just have a talent for blogging. They have innate curiosity, a good command of language and the discipline to combine the two in digestible bits for the web. Sometimes they are funny, often scathing, usually insightful and cheefully devoid of ego. These people get bookmarked. They get their own folder in my RSS reader and tonight they get shared with you.

shellsharks

His intro reads - Welcome to Shellsharks - a blog, an IndieWeb site, a community, and a central point-of-presence for myself on the web. What I publish here is a reference for myself but is available to be consumed by all. I write about all things Infosec, Technology and Life in general. Follow shellsharks on Mastodon

Hollie - Small Good Things

Follow Hollie on Mastodon - Her bio - she/they
Enthusiastic about #nature, hats, kindness, #puns, #tea, funny stories, personal websites, lichen, bags, space, boats, hobbits, #UrbanSketching, #books, #watercolors, laughing, ham radio, #bicycling, #monsterdon, #cooking, #knitting, spinning, sewing.

#HSP, #fibro & #MECFS, MCAS, #anxiety, #ADHD.

GenX, happily married to @gregtitus for 29 yrs, mom of two adult kids (one hard-of-hearing, one autistic trans). Wears heart on sleeve. Trans rights are human rights.

mb - jarunmb.com

Follow mb on Mastodon - Not just another tech guy on the Fediverse. Instead, you get a real live human, sharing about the ins and outs of work, parenting, blogging, learning and adapting to life in 2025. One of my favorites.

Pratik - Nerve Endings Firing Away

Follow Pratik on Mastodon - Do you like smart, challenging people? I do. That's why I follow Pratik. He's an authentic guy who isn't afraid to point things out when they need to be pointed out. His Mastodon bio - "I live in Austin. I typically post photos and post personal and work-related updates, especially travel. I offer my opinions on Internet trends and media, talk about TV and movies I watch, share books I read or want to read, rant on right-wing politics, and advocate for inclusion and diversity in all facets of life."

Mark R. Stoneman

Follow Mark on Mastodon - Like I said, I like smart people and this New England historian fits that bill. Mark is friendly, thoughtful and has a knack for relating what is happening today with events from the past. As a veteranr who has lived around military bases my whole life, I've know a whole bunch of Gis, but Mark is the first Ivy League combat arms guy I've encountered - and an enlisted one at that!! Good people as we say down here.

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Like many Mac users, I enjoy customizing the look of my operating system. I particularly like the look of older, vintage icons from Mac history, having spent a lot of memorable and enjoyable times on older machines. There are several apps that let you make changes to program icons, Replacicon is a well known example, but Apple made it hard to alter systems icons, Don't like the Finder face? Tough. Apple wants you to have it.

Enter CharmBar, a delightful little app from kepler.cafe, makers of DockDoor, another well thought out app that gives you Window previews when you hover the cursor over icons on the dock. Using Charmbar, you can alter or replace dock icons.with any emoji, jpg or png file. Its simple interface lets you create your own library of files. When you pick an application icon to add your own touches to, you select one or more of the images you've added to your library and overlay the original icon. You can completely cover it up or just add whimsical flourishes.

Your changes show up in real time. If you grow tired of the extra elements, they'll go away when you close the program, which runs from the menu bar.

Charmbar is a one-time purchase of $5 on Gumroad. One license code is good for installing the app on up to three Macs. There are no subscriptions and no invasive elements to suck away your data. The developer is active on Reddit, and doesn't appear to mind interacting with the community.

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As the end of my second week of retired life draws to an end, I am reminded that nothing is routine. Weather irregularities and disruptions caused by maintenance issues at the university have had Wonder Woman working from home, which is nice because I like hanging out with her even when she is busy. It's kept me from firmly entrenching myself in a routine, however. When I told her that she was messing with my flow, she didn't appreciate it. All I meant is that it is challenging to establish a routine when the pattern of the days varies so much. Sheesh!

I've continued to work on my home office. It got relocated from our unused dining room to the living area where the two of us hang out so that I can work on my projects without being in a different part of the house. I rounded up all the external hard drives I had floating around, a total of eleven. When added together, they give me 17 TB of extra storage added to the four TB of internal storage in my computers. A lot of that will be unused space for a while. Some of it is being used as backup locations. I set up a Plex server on my Linux computer with movies, TV shows, music, and photos.

Another project is disconnecting from all the big tech companies apart from Apple to the extent possible. We are leaving Gmail and using Fastmail. I have all my important accounts using the new email already. I spend about an hour a day moving some other 240 accounts using my Google credentials each day. I will have that finished by the middle of April. I managed to download and remove the DRM from 500 Kindle ebooks and 500 Audible audiobooks. We are trying to decide on new vendors for each of those media types. We are dropping Amazon Prime next month, so I am in the process of downloading nearly a TB of backed up photos from there. I uninstalled all Microsoft products from my computers, but those sneaky bastards left several processes behind that I had to remove via the Terminal to finally disconnect.

I set up a weekly lunch data with my father. He's the primary caregiver for my step-mother who has advanced Alzheimer's. He needs a break once in a while, and I am happy to spend time with him. We've never been especially close, but he is fun to spend time with. He's a talented storyteller and good at making conversation.

I've assumed sole responsibility for the grocery shopping so that our weekends aren't partially given over to that chore. Wonder Woman wanted me to start making some of her favorite vegetables more frequently, so I've been loading up on asparagus, zucchini, fresh green beans and the like. She never turns down a cuppa either, so we've been having many mugs of the top-shelf Irish tea I love so much.

My sleep patterns are shot all to hell. We go to bed early because Wonder Woman likes to run before work. I am usually awake for good between 2:00 and 3:00 AM, when I get up to start writing. Of course, I get sleepy later on, indulging in a nap while sitting on the couch. I'd like to consolidate that sleep to a continuous period during the night but so far it's not working out.

We've had a couple of weekend getaways. One was to Raleigh for my birthday where we had a good time visiting our favorite restaurants and shops. Then we went down to the South Carolina low country for a race. Next weekend is the first camping trip of 2025 with five of the grandkids. Next month we are going back to Southwest Virginia for the first time since Hurricane Helene. My kiddos have been on the road too or are getting ready to. My daughter and family went to Costa Rica for a family vacation. She's been sending me daily pictures and keeping me updated. My son is preparing for a trip next week to Frankfurt and Berlin for business. His passion is art and I hope he gets a chance to see some good museums between meetings.

As you can see, I have not been bored or looking for things to do. My dream of long spells of uninterrupted time to write has yet to come to fruition, but it will get here soon enough.

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The Scarlet-faced Liocichla, native to Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, and southern China. #Birds

On my software review blog, AppAddict, I focus on apps I like and that I think will be helpful to other Mac users. The only time I write negative reviews is when I don't like a company's business practices or when my take on an app is different than that of the majority. I give apps a fair test and I'm generally willing to give a developer the benefit of the doubt. I've gotten good feedback from a number of them, including a few I've kind of idolized over the years. The day will come, though, when the author of one of the apps of which I was critical is going to hit me up with a WTF? I'll be glad to listen and if I got something wrong, I'll correct my mistake.I won't just change my take on it because someone asks me to. Lame.

I don't think many people are good at giving constructive criticism or negative feedback. Have you ever had a boss that would email the entire department when trying to correct one person's behavior because they were just to chickenshit to talk to them one on one? I endured that for years with more than one boss. Another indicator of poor people skills is when a boss waits until your annual performance review to criticize you, instead of being a coach or a mentor. Managers get paid to manage, but too many of them don't seem ti like that part of the job.

Giving criticism isn't being mean. Sometimes withholding it is. It's a skill that can be learned. Here are some resources.

How To Give Constructive Criticism: 6 Helpful Tips - Personal Excellence - Includes the infamous feedback sandwich method

Do You Know How To Write A Good Bad Review? | by Liz King | Medium - By now we all know where to look for online reviews — on Yelp, Google, or Facebook. But do we know how to write them, and do we understand how they can impact a small business?

Are You Being Too Critical in Your Relationship? | Psychology Today - Because we aren't taught how to navigate differences in our relationships, we tend to do it badly. However, as adults, we can learn to navigate differences in a healthy way, fostering more safety and connection in our relationships.

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I recently saw a new Mac file finding app, Cling, announced on Macupdate and Thriftmac. The description of the app said that it brings fuzzy search to a utility with a GUI. Searches with partial or misspelled file names are promised to work. The developer's website states that the app is designed to be similar in function to the legendary Windows file finding utility, Everything, which is indeed, one of the best file finding apps I have ever used. I've installed it for many users who needed to search network drives containing thousands of files.

I read the documentation on the website which went into detail about the amount of CPU power consumed and the memory needed to run Cling. Logically, since it does not use the Spotlight indez like some other search tools, it n needed time after starting the first time to create its own index. The website said that it takes about five minutes. I gave it a couple of hours. I ran my first seach using the word Obsidian as my search term. I've written several articles and taken a lot of notes about the app by that name. I wanted to see what Cling would return. To my surprise and dismay, it returned a list of folders with Obsidian in the path name. I tried several other searches and discovered that including a file extension helped it locate files to some extent. The results Windows only shows 30 results by default, which you can adjust up to 100, but there is no way to have it show you all the files it finds that match what you are searching for.

To compare the results, I used Find any File, another Mac file-finding utility that builds its own indez. A search for Obsidian returned 4,734 hits, all of which it displayed for me to sort and search through. I did not have to try different file extensions, nor did my results contain unrelated folders that had Obsidian in the path name. I was much happier with the results.

Other Mac search utilities that worked better for me are:

• Tembo
• Easy Find
• Houdahspot

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An abandoned tenant house on the Hubbard farm in rural Cumberland County, NC

I was reviewing my journal this morning and saw this from today’s date in 2024 - Congratulations and Happy Anniversary to @jarrod

Window to the past. Think of the conversations held around that table. McDougald Road, Mamers, NC

Reblogged from last May because I like this one!

As I spend less and less time on commercial websites and more time exploring the blogs on IndieWeb platforms, I am developing a type and preferences. There's plenty to choose from.

I like tech but not too much tech

For better or worse, it takes a fairly technical person to get involved in blogging. A lot of the people I read are developers of some sort or other even if they don't write about that part of their lives that much. I enjoy reading about the relationship people have with the tech in their life and how that has evolved over time. I find it interesting to read about what people are making, although if a blog primarily consists of code blocks and inside baseball talk about the nuances of particular programming languages, I'm probably going to move on. Most people do a pretty good job at striking a balance.

I like smart and smart-ass but not people who think themselves smarter than everyone else

There are a few bloggers who consistently write about how dumb people are and it's a big old turn off. I like smart people. I like people smarter than me (not hard). I even like people with a smart ass sense of humor but I have worked for too long with stereotypical computer support people who think all end users are stupid and I'm so very weary of that attitude. I think it's great to point out the misconceptions of others but it's boorish if that's the main thing someone writes about.

I like people whose political content is about peace, compassion, equality and diversity

In other words, I'm not a fan of, nor will I read very much of what passes as conservative ideology these days. I don't want to live in a bubble but I'm just not going to waste any of my remaining time on this planet engaging with people who don't believe in climate change or the importance of stamping out white supremacy or in allowing people to be as non-traditional as they want to be. Luckily, I haven't run into too much of that on Mastodon or Scribbles or Micro.blog.

I like consistency

If you are the kind of blogger who just spits out content day after day, I'm here to tell you to keep it up! I realize not everybody has that in them and that's OK. With me, you just don't have to worry that you post too much. If you only write a few paragraphs a week, it's harder to get to know you, to develop curiosity about your the things you share. I don't always have the time or the inclination to read 5,000 word missives, but I like knowing what folks are up to.

I like friendly

I'm from the south and have lived here my whole life. Down here we have a sort of innate familiarity. We are apt to ask how your Mama's doing even if we don't know her. I like people who come across with that same sort of vibe, letting pieces of their real lives leak out. I absolutely do not mind hearing about you feeling tired taking your kid to basketball practice or shocking news about your grandma's affair. I like authentic people who don't posture, who are just themselves, struggling like the rest of us to make sense of a confusing world without resorting to barrier building between themselves and their readers.

I love quotes. Nothing would make me happier than for you to send me any of your favorites in an email, or post them on mastodon or Bluesky and tag me. I'll be glad to give a shout out to anyone who cares to share.

"Everything you can imagine is real." — Pablo Picasso

“Dreams are extremely important. You can’t do it unless you imagine it.” — George Lucas

"Who looks outward dreams, who looks inward awakens." — Carl Jung

I was doing some maintenance on my collection of quotes today, a relaxing, if never ending task. I had a few highlights I'd saved without also recording the author's name, so I did a full text search for them on Kagi and found out that Goodreads has a huge quotes repository. Every single quote I was looking for had a Goodreads page. I found pages for Albert Camus, Maya Angelo, Joseph Campbell and several other notables.

More Quote Websites

Quote Topics - BrainyQuote

A-Z Quotes | Quotes for All Occasions

Best and famous collection of quotes at QuotesLyfe

Wikiquote

My Collection of 500+ Authors and Quotes

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I have collected quotes for years, using various apps, Obsidian Notes, spreadsheets and Google Docs. I am still in search of the elusive perfect, feature packed app. Here's what I would like the app to be able to do.

Features I Want

• Import from a spreadsheet containing the quote, author, source, tag(s), date collected
• iCloud or other reliable syncing mechanism
• Export individual quotes in a format suitable for social media
• Universal (Mac and iOS)
• Automatic import of author pictures and biographies from Wikipedia or other source
• Share sheet in and out
• Searchable by tag or author
• A nice to have, but not absolutely required feature would be importing Kindle highlights

Apps That Have Some of These Features

• Quotemarks - Quote Notebook - This comes close, but it doesn't sync through the cloud and doesn't have a way to share anything but text to social media.
• Thoughts - Inspiration Manager - iOS only. Does not display a list of authors. Tag list is not in alphabetical order.
• Quotes - Organize and Recall - Mac only. Can't import anything other than a Kindle clippings file.
• Quotebook by Lickability - The OG quotes app dating back to 2011. It was removed from the App Store in 2016, but has remained usable. The deprecated version has good syncing via iCloud, automatic import of author pictures and biographies, import and export through CSV. There is no Mac version, however and it's sure to break one day since it is quintessential abandonware.
• Quotz - a nice iOS app of quality quotes, but you can't add your own. It does have good sharing features though
• BrainyQuote - Another nice quote data base with good sharing features, but with no way to add your own content
• TextShot - Works on Mac and iOS. Allows you to create your own quotes with title, author and source, but only saves image files of the quotes, no tagging, no searching.
• Quotify - No way to import existing quote collection except through one at a time manual entry. Have to use work around for tagging. Doesn't display a list of authors or tags. Has nice sharing features. The individual import feature is also well thought out.

Quote Sources

If you are interested, I have a repository on GitHub with Markdown notes from 500+ authors and public figures with one or more quotes from each of them. Browse the notes or download a ZIP of the whole thing. They are formatted for Obsidian, if that's your jam.

Goodreads also has an extensive quote library.

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Taken from Green Mountain, near Sparta, NC on the Blue Ridge Parkway in autumn.

The centrist and traditionalist wing of the Democratic Party stays perpetually irritated at the more progressive and leftist members of the party. James Carville recently said that "defund the police" were the three stupidest words ever uttered by a politician. I can never tell whether the Democrats who rake in all the corporate dollars are compromised progressives or not. I have a hard time believing that Barak Obama was ever truly against same-sex marriage, or Bill Clinton either for that matter, but both of them stood in front of news cameras and said they were. I tend to think they were both temporary sell outs for the sake of courting middle of the road voters.

Richard Nixon and George Wallace both ran a law and order campaign in 1968, appealing to older people who were put off by all the scary black people and the college kids raising hell about the war. For a long time, members of both parties were all about mandatory minimum sentences, building more prisons, and hiring more cops. Right-wing television has never met a killer cop they didn't like and defend. Most voters seem to be OK with short-changing all kinds of people in need to be able to spend money on law enforcement. Smart politicians try to scare the hell out of people because it works. Scared people vote for those they think will protect them.

I'll go ahead and say that no, I do not think All Cops Are Bastards (ACAB). I don't believe that all of any group is homogeneous. I do think that police work, unfortunately, attracts too many people who aren't suited for it. Too many cops shoot to kill, claiming they were scared for their life because some black person did something besides lay perfectly still on the ground. Too may judges and juries fall for that shit and too may people are dead because of it. Hey, it can be a scary job, I get it, but if you tend to frighten easily, don't sign up for the police. Do something else.

The tiny university where I worked spent big bucks buying gear for the campus police, including two four-wheel-drive vehicles and new long barrelled weapons. This was the same year they laid off librarians, admin assistants and humanities professors. Of course, they also changed the names of the DEI department since January too. But hey, people still have their pronouns in the email signatures and discreet pride flags can be seen, so the important stuff is covered, I guess.

I'm going to go ahead and say, too, that if you think we need militarized police forces with armored vehicles and arsenals of automatic weapons, you and I probably should not hang out. If you think we require more prisons while ignoring aging school buildings, stay away from me. If you are already over the death of George Floyd and think all that Black Lives Matter stuff was a bad idea, well, you aren't alone, but neither are you right.

All over the US, people who were late to the party to recognize police violence against people of color are already sauntering back to their liberal (I don't mean that in a good way) attitudes. That's when you support people of color as long as they don't live next door. The right-wing crazies are making room for the reluctant supporters of maybe, just maybe, spending a little less on cops and a little more on preventing crime to abandon that risky idea. I mean, when James Carville is calling you stupid, how can you be right?

Well, not me folks. I'm all for spending money on kids, education, health care, poverty prevention and a host of other worth causes and instead of the po-po. I don't think giving the police even more immunity from violent crimes they commit is anything but crazy. I think that anyone who is afraid to publicly state that Black Lives Matter is a POS. Sorry, if the shoe fits. I'm not going to be one of those white folks who are secretly relieved that it is OK to be a little racist again. I'm not going to sell out my LGB or my T friends either, no matter how easy it now is to get away with it. Why, because right is right and wrong is wrong and popular opinion ain't got shit to do with it.

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Not your average taco place, is it? One of their specialties is bulgogi with kimci.

<img src=“https://amerpie.lol/uploads/2025/day-one2025-03-11-at-04.10.38.jpeg" width=“600” height=“399” alt=“A black and white image of a retro diner interior featuring a long counter with several swivel bar stools. The counter area is attended by three staff members working in the kitchen. The ceiling has pendant lights and ceiling fans. On the left, there are several round tables with chairs. A large sign above the counter reads “Off the Hook Taco Emporium.” The overall atmosphere is vintage and cozy.">

One of my favorite parts of living in the information age is the ease of discovery of entertainment options. I remember when we had to wait for the TV Guide to show up in the mailbox, listen to FM radio and read the siges outside the cinema for information. Now, thanks to huge databases and fan communities, you can get in depth suggestions from your digital alter ego at a moment's notice. It's also fun tio find out what your friends like. You can ask questions and give feedback. Here are a few under the radar picks from yours truly.

Books

1. Lexicon by Max Barry - a science fiction novel about an organization that teaches it's candidates how to use language as a way to control the minds of others
2. Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing by Ted Conover - the author practices immersice journalism by placing himself in situations where he experiences life first hand in order to write about it. In this case he takes a job as a guard at Sing Sing prison in NY to explore modern American prisons.
3. A Rising Man (Sam Wyndham, #1) by Abir Mukherjee - Set in India during the British Raj, this is a novel featuring a detective who is an opium addicted veteran of The Great War. It has a great sense of time and place.
4. Never a Dull Moment: 1971 The Year That Rock Exploded by David Hepworth - I love books about music and this one thoroughly explores the greatest year in rock hostory when classic albums by Led Zepplin, The Who, Carole King, James Taylor, Rod Stewart, Joanie Mitchell and more were released.
5. The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan - Michael Pollan may be the best popular science writer alive. In this book he explores four plants: the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato in a way that us informative and entertaining.

TV Shows

1. Scott & Bailey - D.C. Rachel Bailey and D.C. Janet Scott have a robust and engaging friendship which enables them to draw upon each other’s strengths and investigate murders for the Manchester Metropolitan Police. I love the strong female leads.
2. Broadchurch - The murder of a young boy in a small coastal town brings a media frenzy, which threatens to tear the community apart. I've been a David Tennant and an Olivia Coleman fave ever since I watched this.
3. The Fall - When the Police Service of Northern Ireland are unable to close a case after 28 days, Detective Superintendent Stella Gibson of the Metropolitan Police Service is called in to review the case. Under her new leadership, the local detectives must track down and stop a serial killer who is terrorising the city of Belfast. Not one to watch alone. It is intense.
4. Inspector George Gently - A British crime drama adapted from the George Gently novels by Alan Hunt and set in the 1960s. Inspector George Gently is an old-school detective trying to come to terms with a time when the lines between the police and criminals have become blurred. British cop shows are so much better than American ones. They think more, shoot less.
5. Foyle's War - As WW2 rages around the world, DCS Foyle fights his own war on the home-front as he investigates crimes on the south coast of England. Foyle's War opens in southern England in the year 1940. A great job of recreating Britain during its greatest hour.

Movies

1. The Station Agent (2003) - When his only friend dies, a man born with dwarfism moves to rural New Jersey to live a life of solitude, only to meet a chatty hot dog vendor and a woman dealing with her own personal loss. Peter Dinklage before GOT.
2. Yesterday (2019) - A struggling musician realizes he's the only person on Earth who can remember The Beatles after waking up in an alternate reality where the group was forgotten. Lot's of Beatles music and a few surprises.
3. The Dig (2021) - As WWII looms, a wealthy widow hires an amateur archaeologist to excavate the burial mounds on her estate. When they make a historic discovery, the echoes of Britain's past resonate in the face of its uncertain future‎. One of those movies that will have you reading Wikipedia articles as soon as it is over.
4. Chef (2014) - When Chef Carl Casper suddenly quits his job at a prominent Los Angeles restaurant after refusing to compromise his creative integrity for its controlling owner, he is left to figure out what's next. Finding himself in Miami, he teams up with his ex-wife, his friend and his son to launch a food truck. Taking to the road, Chef Carl goes back to his roots to reignite his passion for the kitchen -- and zest for life and love. Even though Jon Favreau is responsible for a bunch of MCU schlock, he redeems himself in this story about self discovery and parenthood.
5. The Bookshop (2017) - Set in a small English town in 1959, a woman decides, against polite but ruthless local opposition, to open a bookshop, a decision which becomes a political minefield. Another story with a strong, indomitable female character.
   
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Swinsian is an app for playing music that ticks every box in what a Mac based music player for local libraries sgould be. I can think of no other app that exemplifies bloat like Apple's Music app, a product desgned not for ease of use, but for maximization of revenue. Someone in Cupertino decided that none of us who had massive, carefully tagged collections of music files collected over the years deserved an app to make thge best use of our tunes. They decided we' were just going to stream and that we were going to be happy doing it.

Swinsian took a backup of my iTunes (yes, iTunes) library from 2017, with 32K songs from 2.3K albums and imported the information in a matter of minutes, complete with play counts, ratings and playlists. The customizable interface is reminiscent of a time when iTunes just worked. Now that the information is imported, Swinsian will monitor the folder where I keep my music and automatically add any other files I place there.

You can download and use all of the features of Swinsian without limitations for 30 days, after which it requires a license costing $25. It's available at the developer's website.

Features

Customize

There are multiple ways to view tracks: art grid, column browser and track inspector, all of which can be hidden if you are into a minimal interface.

Organize

Tag multiple tracks at once with ease. Use regular expressions to find and replace tags, ensuring your music stays perfectly tagged. The Duplicate Finder comes in handy, helping you find and remove duplicate tracks with flexible criteria, keeping your library organized and clutter-free.

Control

Control playback with global shortcuts and the mini window. The customizable desktop art widget adds a nice touch to the interface.

Other Nice Touches

• Folder watching
• Album art fetching
• Playback Notifications
• Last.fm scrobbling
• Separate playlist windows
• Find and replace tag editing, with regex support
• Smart playlists
• Library stats
• Playback over AirPlay
• Automatic Podcast downloading
• Applescript control

Audiophile Information

• 10 or 31 band Graphic Equalizer
• Supports Flac, MP3, AAC, ALAC, Ogg Vorbis, WMA, WAV, Opus, AC3, AIFF, MusePack, DSF, and APE.
• Gapless playback
• Automatic changing of device sample rate
• Support for cue files and embedded cue information

Other Reviews

• Is Swinsian a Good Music Player: A Complete Review
• Swinsian: How I Chose The Best MacOS Music Library App
• Swinsian: How I Chose The Best MacOS Music Library App

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From The Virgina Creeper Trail, Mount Rogers National Recreation Area prior to Hurricane Helene. It looks much different now.

For years when I was growing up, my Mom's husband refused to get a telephone put in our house. What was strange was that he was a journalist. He spent so much time at the newspaper office that they never needed to call him at home. The rest of us just did without talking to our grandparents or friends except in person. I'm not sure how my mother managed to arrange visits with the family, but she figured it out.

One set of grandparents were on a party line. One long ring meant the call was for them. Two short rings meant it was for the neighbors. If you wanted call someone in the same town, you only had to dial five numbers. Theirs was the first phone number I ever learned and more than 50 years later, I still remember it.

I moved to my uncle's farm when I was a freshman in high school. He and my aunt lived in a 100-year-old farmhouse that thankfully had a telephone, but just one. It had about 50 feet (ca. 15 m) of phone wire tethering it to the wall, so it was semi-portable if you cared to string the wire all through the house to get someplace where you could talk in private.

I wasn't dying to get a cell phone when they first became popular. The whole process of typing out texts on a keypad seemed utterly ridiculous and only business executives and politicians had Blackberrys. Besides, I wanted an actual portable computer, so I spent my money on a Palm Pilot at first. I eventually had to get a cell phone for work. My youngest daughter got a job at Subway, just so she could buy a cell phone, buy somehow I got stuck with the bill. She started dating a GI whose home state, and cell phone number were both Florida based. It didn't matter that he was right down the road at Ft. Bragg. Every time she called him, and she called him A LOT, it was a long-distance charge. She also couldn't stay within her limit of text messages and I got a few surprises there too.

I wish I had the nerd cred to claim ownership of a first gen iPhone, but I didn't make the move until 2009. One of my co-workers was at the Apple Store on Day One though, and he laid down the dough for that squat, under-powered little world changer. There wasn't even an app store. You just went to websites that acted like apps. Steve Jobs said they were just as good.

Once I got an iPhone, I became one of those new phone every year people for the next decade. I made a few release day drives to the nearest Apple Store, a 75-mile one-way drive from home. Luckily, I've never broken a display despite dropping the damn things hundreds of times. I've even driven off with my phone on the hood of my car and didn't break it by slinging it onto the road. I have washed an iPhone in the washing machine. I was sad about that. I also left my phone and wallet at a store when out on a long bike ride once and didn't get either of them back.

I kept the iPhone 11 for four years. I only upgraded because Obsidian wouldn't work correctly on a phone that old. Of course, these days everyone has a phone. My parents both have iPhones and only call me about them occasionally. All but the youngest of the grandkids have phones and I absolutely love texting them. If Wonder Woman and I do anything fun without them, I let them know. I don't go in a candy store without sending "Wish you were here!!" One of our kids, the youngest is a rebellious sort occasionally goes over to the dark side and rocks an Android from time to time. My sister, who has multiple degrees, good politics, a kind heart and a giant brain, has never owned a single Apple product in her life, a character flaw if there ver was one. My Republican brother is also Not An Apple Person. Everyone else is, though.

I like to look at my usage stats from time to time. My goal each month is to have less than five minutes of actual voice use. I don't care how much data I burn through or how many messages I send and receive, I just don't want to talk on the phone. This isn't the 80s.

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I like a great many elements of the Internet, even in 2025, when cookie banners, privacy warnings, newsletter subscription popups and the like rob us all of some joy while we browser. I get hives when I have to search for a simple recipe. Every person who's ever read an article on how to monetize a blog seems to have decided that the blog they need to create should have recipes and a metric ton of search engine optimization crap on it. Not only that, instead of just saying "This is good. You should cook it." Recipe bloggers need to talk about how their Aunt Nancy made the recipe on ger organic Vermont rabbit farm when they were kids. I don't like it. Not a fan.

Here are some recipe websites where you don't have to deal with that anxiety inducing clutter. If you want to make some cornbread, they will tell you how to do it without commenting on how you should feel about doing it.

• Home - Budget Bytes
• Cozy Latin-Inspired Comfort Food Recipes - A Cozy Kitchen
• Damn Delicious Recipes | Simple Delicious Food Recipes
• Best Recipes for Dinners, Soups, Desserts, & More | The Recipe Critic
  
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I've got cake on the brain today, for some reason...

I've extensively tested four different recipe management apps, all available in the App Store:

• Paprika
• Anylist
• Crouton
• Mela

All of them are quality apps and they are not mirror images of each other. Anylist, for example has helpful features unrelated to groceries or cooking. It, along with Crouton, is a subscription app. Paprika is a one time purchase of $29.99. Mela, my pick for recipes, is only $9.99. The developer, Silvio Rizzi, is also responsible for the popular RSS app Reeder Classic and the chronological timeline app, Reeder. He's a talented developer but has a reputation for being difficult to get a response from. I don't have personal experience in that area. His apps work fine for me and I've never had to contact him.

Mela Features

• In app browser with preview - If you've looked for recipes online, you know they can be buried in SEO slop and lots of stories about how Aunt Nancy used to bake this cake. Mela helps avoid that by automatically extracting most recipes from wordy websites.
• Feeds - If you have favorite cooking blogs, you can subscribe to them from within Mela and read the recipes in the viewer.
• Cook Mode - Displays the recipe in a large, easy to read font and can load multiple recipes for the same meal
• Timers - In app timers to use when preparing meals
• Scanner - Scan and OCR recipes from cookbooks and magazines
• Apple Integration - Meal planning is calendar based and can be viewed and shared on devices whether Mela is installed on them or not. Grocery lists are managed in reminders and can also be shared on non-Mela devices.
• Printing - You can print Mela recipes
• Organizing - Create categories for your saved recipes based on your won criteria

The iOS/iPadOS version of Mela is an extra purchase, but it is only $4.99

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The carousel at the NC Dogwood Festival in Fayetteville, NC

As a happily married person, finally, with a lot of experience being an unhappily married person, I'm going to share a few lessons I learned the hard way. They may not be universally applicable, so use your head. You know your partner better than I do.

Time

I believe that when it comes to spending time with your mate, quality, and quantity matter. If you limit the time you spend together intending to making that time extra-special, you run the risk of creating unrealistic expectations and putting too much pressure on you both. Wonder Woman and I do things together that aren't on most people's data night list. We go to the grocery store and run errands together. We go to our grandkids events together. We have time apart too, but the important thing for our marriage is that we like each other's company. Even when we aren't actively in conversation, we stay in the same room to read or work.

Honesty

Come as absolutely as close as you can possibly get to being 100% honest. Lying, either overtly or by omission can be habit-forming. It will always be damaging. Being honest with another person is the way that you demonstrate respect for them. Not doing things that you feel you have to lie about is the way to demonstrate that you really and truly do love them. Hopefully, you are with someone you are not afraid of, so telling them an unpleasant truth may not be fun, but it won't be damaging. Feeling that you just can't be honest with the person you are with is a fatal sign.

Communication

Honestly, I could be a better communicator when things are bothering me. I'm not one to complain or criticize as a general rule, but there are times when It would be better to say something than try to just deal with a negative feeling. What I am good at, and what I practice regularly, is being vocally supportive and complementary. Wonder Woman knows in her heart of hearts that I consider her beautiful, intelligent, hardworking and kind. I don't let a chance go by to build her up. It's all honest too, not flattery. I think she is remarkable, and I let her know that regularly. I grew up with men who were not complimentary and I didn't like it. I try not be that way.

Respect

When you love someone, you treat them with respect. Full stop. I make decisions on things I do, based on how will they will affect my wife. We worked at the same place for a couple of years and the way I acted was definitely influenced by my desire not to cause any issues for her. Have I ever fallen short here? Absolutely, but hopefully, I've learned from my mistakes. I know what she considers important and because of the way I feel about her, that makes those things important to me by proxy. I laughingly refer to her preferences as "the rules," but in reality, there are things I do because I respect her and that's the way to show it.

This doesn't come close to a comprehensive list of what it takes to have a happy home life. It's a good start, though. I hope you have someone to practice this stuff with.

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Every night my Obsidian Vault is synchronized to a folder on Dropbox. I use an app called Sync Folders Pro, in which you can schedule tasks. The only problem is that in order for the task to run, the app must already be launched. There's no way I can remember to launch it when I'm done using my computer for the day, so I had to find a way to have it launched for me prior to the time the task is supposed to run.

I chose Keyboard Maestro to do it for me, since Keyboard Maestro can also quit the app after the task completes. I use KBM for a lot of things, so it wasn't like I had to spend extra money just to get that feature. There are other, less expensive and simpler apps that can do the same thing.

• Task Til Dawn - A Free Mac Automation App - Also automates some file management tasks, printing and browser based tasks
• Alarm Clock Pro - An insanely useful app for all sorts of things, app launching is just a single feature
• Shortery - The Missing Mac Automator - Unlike iOS, you can't trigger shortcuts based on conditions. Shortery takes care of that by running shortcuts when triggered by time of day, wi-fi connections, calendar events and a dozen other conditions
• Scheduler for Mac - Free Automation Utility - this app can launch scripts as well as appsto accomplish all sorts of tasks
• Running Cron Jobs on Your Local Mac - If you are a CLI pro, you don't need a third party tool to automate events. You can use crontabto run scripts that do all sorts of things for you on a time based schedule
• LaunchControl: The launchd GUI - This is another pretty technical app, one that l provides all the information you need to create or debug a launchd(8) service through an easy to understand GUI.
• How to schedule workflows on Mac - You can use the Automator app built into your Mac to create launchers for apps, documents and URLS and then activate those through a calendar alert. One of the available alerts built into the Apple calendar is the ability to open a file. If you just want to open an app, you don't even need to use Automator, just tell Calendar to open the app at time relative to the calendar event your created,

Some other time based tasks I use include:

• An Applescript to eject my backup drive in the morning before I wake up so all I have to do is unplug it. ChatGPT can write Applescripts pretty well
• An Applescript that moves tasks in Things 3 to a different data and time every night
• A shortcut that imports imports screenshots that meet certain conditions into a designated photo album every night
• Open and close an app on my two Macs at alternating times because I don't want it running on them simultaneously
• Before I retired, I automated the launching of the web page for my job's time clock systm so that I could clock in and out for the day and my lunch break

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(Originally published in June 2024)

By the time I was mature enough for marriage, I'd already been married twice, once to my high-school girlfriend with whom I had two children and again to a woman I met in drug and alcohol rehab. I can't say that I'd suggest either one of those places as the ideal location to find your life partner. Marriage #1 lasted about three years. I still see her, of course, we have the kids and the grandkids, and I'm pleased to announce that our early parenthood didn't ruin anyone's life. She is a successful IT security consultant in the DC area, and our kids are both professionals. Marriage #2 also lasted about three years, during which time neither of us drank or used drugs, although maybe it would have been better if we had. It was pure insanity. I haven't seen her in over 30 years, and that's perfectly fine by me.

I met my third wife at the tail end of my 20s in the Westinghouse factory, where we both worked on the manufacturing floor. We were married for 18 years, most of them pretty happy. I had custody of my two children, and she had a daughter that I raised with her. During our marriage, she got a degree in elementary education. And became a second-grade teacher. I found my calling in IT. We supported each other until the very end, when it became obvious that we'd grown apart. She spent most of her time wrapped up in school, and I pursued riding my bicycle to fanatical ends. By this time, all of our kids were grown and gone, and it was just over. Four years after our divorce, she died of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

I've been with Wonder Woman since 2012. When we met, we were both into endurance sports, me mostly cycling and her in triathlons, although running is her true talent. Fittingly, our honeymoon was a five-month thru hike of the Appalachian Trail. Like me, she had two children early and between the two of us, we have five kids and thirteen grandchildren. I was a little apprehensive about several things when I first met her. My fragile male ego had never been out earned by a partner in my life and she was a CPA and partner in one of the largest accounting firms in the area. I had to get over that. I have always been just an average athlete, but she is a true competitor, blessed with well above average physical skills and a tremendous discipline to train and get the most out of every iota of talent she possesses. She has never, not one time, ever made me feel bad for not being able to keep up with her. I had to have both knees surgically replaced and during my ongoing rehab, she's content to go as slow as me as I lumber around the neighborhood.

We typically watch an hour of TV a day, always with her laying in my arms with her head on my chest. We have a huge sectional sofa, but we choose to sit right beside each other. Not only that, but we worked at the same place after I came out of retirement. Of course, she's the associate VP of finance, and I was just doing end user support in the IT department, but it doesn't matter. Riding together back and forth, eating lunch together and having the same co-workers was pretty cool. My kids love her to death. My son flew up from Texas to help me serve as her support crew when she ran her first 100-mile ultramarathon. He ran a 16-mile leg of the race at 3am to serve as her pacer. Our grandkids are just that, our grandkids. Her daughters lost their dad shortly before we got married, and although I am not his replacement by any means, I still love them very much.

I know I am a very lucky man. Not having the best track record at marriage hasn't kept me from finally having a successful and happy one. We don't have "buy a helicopter" money, but we do all right. We've traveled a fair bit, and we can be there for our kids if they need us. Likewise, we make each other happy most of the time. She wishes I could match her energy sometimes and I wish she'd take it easy sometimes, but ultimately, we are fine. She is a classic introvert, and she's taught me how to value time recharging at home. I like people, and she's come a long way in her willingness to interact with folks she doesn't know well. As clichéd as it may be, we really do complete each other.

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On the northern part of the Grand Strand, Cherry Grove, SC

Modern email clients typically have robust filtering options. If you get email you don't want, and you can't be bothered to unsubscribe, you can filter it right into your trash, spam or into a folder that you never look at.
Gmail - How to filter email
Fastmail - How to set up rules
Apple - Filter emails on a Mac

Many other services let you create aliases so that you can easily determine if any spam you get is coming from an address you used at a certain website. Because management is easy and because I like having useful information come to me instead of searching for it, I subscribe to a lot of newsletters. I even pay for a couple of them.

There are some easy to use tools out there for dealing with newsletters. Inoreader, my RSS provider, gives subscribers 20 different email addresses to use to subscribe to newsletters with. You can use the same address for different newsletters, so you aren't limited to just 20 subscriptions. Instead of reading the newsletters in your email app, you can read them in an RSS app or the Inoreader website.

It's common for people with established email accounts to feel overwhelmed by the amount of email they receive. The Unroll.me app can analyze your inbox and help unsubscribe you from newsletters you no longer want. It can also consolidate what you do want to receive into regular digest, combining many emails into just one. It's a free service to boot.

Here are some worthy newsletters to subscribe to:

• Morning Brew
• Letters from an American | Heather Cox Richardson
• 5 Bullet Friday - Tim Ferris
• Democracy Docket
• Lifehacker
• NextDraft | Dave Pell
• Ian Betteridge
• Cult of Mac | Apple news, rumors, reviews and how-tos
• Tangle News
• Wired Daily
• Political News for Normal People. | What The Fuck Just Happened Today?
• Particle: News, organized. | by Particle
• Potentially Interesting Roman History | James Coverley

I have a couple of newsletters now. One is a weekly collection from my personal and links blogs that goes out on Mondays. - ✏️ Subscribe | Amerpie by Lou Plummer

The other newsletter is a daily app review, in case you don't have enough software in your life - Subscribe | AppAddict Newsletter

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Joplin is a free and open-source notes app. It's available for Macs, Windows, Linux, iOS and Android. You can pay for Joplin E2E encrypted synchronization on its servers which are located in France for those looking to avoid US based cloud computing companies who are cooperating with the government. You can also use DIY synchronization on other cloud accounts, like Dropbox or iCloud.

My use case for Joplin is single purpose. After using Evernote from 2009-2023, I exported my data into ENEX files and closed my account due to its exorbitant pricing. I wanted a way to access that information without dealing with Evernote or its owner, Bending Spoons.

My preferred notes app is Obsidian, which is a plain text app that uses markdown. Many of my notes in Evernote were complex HTML emails that didn't translate well into Markdown. The material isn't anything I'll be editing but I want a way to use it for reference when I need it. Joplin did a good job of importing the notes in a readable format. It brought over all my tags. Organizing the information is easy inside Joplin. I elected to use Dropbox for syncing. It took a long time to sync 9K files even though the total file size is just over 1 GB.

I don't plan to add new notes to Joplin, but there is a web clipper available for those who can use that feature. There is also a plugin available that lets Joplin retrieve emails, something easily accomplished in Evernote but that requires considerable workarounds in Obsidian. Joplin doesn't have the same robust extension environment that Obsidian has, but there are several add-ons available.

Joplin is an electron app, so if the prospect of using an app of that nature is against your religion, move on along. I don't mind using electron apps, so it works for my purposes.

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The 100 Greatest TV Performances of the Century - When one thinks of the defining TV performances of the past 25 or so years, what comes to mind?

The 25 best musical movies of this century - The Washington Post - From "Les Mis" to "La La Land," from "Walk Hard" to "Wicked," these films show that the musical genre isn't just standing – it's got new moves, too.

The Putinization of America - The Atlantic - Trump's deference to the Russian dictator has become full-blown imitation.

Dead Athletes. Empty Stands. Billions to Keep Horse Racing Alive - The obvious solution here is also the simplest: Just stop. Let the sport stand on its own and dwindle to whatever size its fan base supports. Instead, state legislatures keep funneling money to it. "The biggest fear that our industry has is that the states are going to stop subsidizing, using slot machines to subsidize the sport," said Jeff Gural, who owns three harness racing tracks. "Without that, there is no sport

The Opt Out Project - Yes, you can live without Big Tech. If data is the new oil, then I'm here to help you go electric. Join the resistance.

How Covid Remade Our America, Five Years Later - t's impossible to imagine that humanity would suffer a global pandemic and come out unchanged. And we certainly didn't. "America is a harsher place, more self-interested and nakedly transactional. We barely trust one another and are less sure that we owe our fellow Americans anything — let alone the rest of the world."

America is Going Just Great - A timeline of America's descent into a fascist hellscape

New and Upcoming Movies Based on Books 2025 - From 'The Housemaid' to 'The Women in Cabin 10': Upcoming Book Adaptations in 2025. From beloved classics to recent releases, a myriad of books are set to be reimagined for the small and big screens.

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White Mountains Sunset from Lake in the Clouds Hut, near Mt. Washington, NH on the Appalachian Trail

I don't think I am sophisticated enough to qualify for foodie status. For one thing, I'm fairly cheap. While I enjoy cooking, I don't enjoy spending hours in the kitchen, reading cookbooks or hunting down ingredients. I just like to eat. When I travel, I'm always on the lookout for regional dishes fixed the way locals eat them. If I miss out, I'm sad.

Eastern North Caolina

First off, where I'm from, barbecue is not a verb. It's not something you do. There is no such thing as a barbecue, singular. You are thinking of a cookout or maybe a grill if your mind is on an appliance. No, here in Eastern North Carolina, barbecue refers to one thing, pork, cooked low and slow and seasoned with a vinegar-based sauce that also contains chili flakes, brown sugar, salt, and pepper. The preferred way to prepare barbecue is a whole hog at the time over hardwood coals, preferably hickory. Admittedly, a good portion of it is prepared on gas grills that those proficient at hog cooking pull behind their pickup trucks to the site of the next pig picking, the name that we give to meals where barbecue is served. The traditional side dishes are coleslaw, potato salad, baked beans and fried cornbread, known as hush puppies.

Texas

Texas is the one other place in the world where what they call barbecue is truly fit to eat. Whether it is my favorite, brisket, ribs, burnt ends or even turkey. chicken or kielbasa, they know how to make it taste exquisite. Tex-Mex is the other regional dish you don't want to miss, particularly breakfast. Their breakfast tacos and migas are my favorites

Chicago

I'd never heard of Chicago-style hot dogs until well into the 21st century. Served on a sesame seed bun and not contaminated with ketchup in any way, they use condiments, including celery salt, that I have not seen anywhere else. The other enjoyable meal I ate in the windy city was Chicago-style pizza, a deep dish specialty that makes it hard to eat more than a couple of slices.

Maine

The two great Maine dishes to me are whole belly clams and of course, a steamed fresh lobster. What makes them taste even better is if you are half starving when you get them. I had both dishes while hiking in Maine as part of my Georgia to Maine hike of the Appalachian Trail, the last 240 miles (ca. 386 km) of which go from the New Hampshire border to the peak of Mount Katahdin in Baxter State Park. They sell seafood everywhere in Maine, it seems. I had the best clams I've ever eaten in a gas station / grocery store in the historic little town of Andover. I was talked out of getting a lobster roll after it was described as lobster and mayo on a hot dog bun, compared to the fresh fried clams that were sweet and tasty and nothing like the battered rubber bands I'd eaten my whole life.

Belfast

Forget drinking Guinness or eating Irish stew. If you are looking for the most authentic meal in the six counties of Northern Ireland, you're going to get it for breakfast. You may not need to eat again for the rest of the day. The Ulster fry consists of bangers {sausages), streaky bacon, beans, eggs, white pudding, black pudding and tomatoes, with the addition of griddle-baked soda farls (quarters) and potato bread. A few mushrooms are also acceptable, but don't get crazy and order has browns. They have a condiment, called brown sauce, that we don't use in the states. You should try it too. Furthermore, order some tea to go with your fry, fixed sweet and milky.

New York City

Walking in to an authentic slice joint anywhere in the five boroughs of New York to get pizza for a quick and affordable meal is a treasured experience. You can see anyone in these places from corner boys to Wall Street executives, and tourists, many, many tourists. I'll also confess to eating one of those dirty water hotdogs from a cart on the Manhattan end of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Santa Fe

I did quite a bit of research before traveling to Santa Fe. The dish that was suggested as being most representative of the area was green chili stew. Man oh man, was it good. New Mexico's signature dish is typically made from roasted local green chili, cubed pork, potatoes, onions, garlic, broth, and various spices. The flavor is a mix of savory, spicy, and slightly smoky, with a rich, broth.

A few other places I'd like to shout out along with their foods are Miami and pork with black beans and rice, fixed Cuban Style. If you go to the South Carolina low country, get some shrimp and grits. A trip to Cincinnati is incomplete without a bowl of their signature chili. Paris is renowned for its fancy chefs, but just slip into a pâtisserie and sample some baked goods. If you're ever in Alaska, get the haddock. It's delicious.

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Although I live in town, the region where we are located is still largely rural. The military reservation for Ft. Bragg, covering 161,000 acres is close enough that artillery fire routinely rattles our windows. During World War 1, the government bought hundreds of farms and timber tracts to create the installation. Except for a few historical churches and cemeteries, all the civilian homes and buildings were removed. The land was allowed to return to its natural state as part of the great eastern pine forest. Carefully managed through the same type of controlled burning that the Native Americans once practiced, the landscape resembles what the Highland Scots who settled the area saw when they traveled up the Cape Fear River to settle here. Today, the land on Ft. Bragg is wild enough to support the endangered Red Cockaded Woodpecker, which lives and nests only in the cavities of mature long-leafed pine trees.

When I travel, I enjoy observing the signature characteristics of what region I am in. If you've ever flown into Ireland, you know why they call it The Emerald Isle. Seeing Pike's Peak towering over Colorado Springs is breathtaking. Send some time in New Hampshire and you will see why they call it The Granite State.

In North Carolina, especially In the coastal plain area where I am from, pine forests are our trademark. The nickname of our state's flagship university, The Tarheels comes from the industry we once had using pine resin to make the tar that sealed the hulls of wooden sailing ships.

1920s Fort Bragg, NC: A Visual Trip | by Matthew Peek | NC Stories of Service | Medium

Longleaf Pine Forests: Protecting and Restoring Habitat | TNC

Long Journey of the Highland Scots | NCpedia

Red-cockaded woodpecker - Wikipedia

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When you have a lot of time to kill and nothing but your phone, what apps do you turn to as time killers?

My wife is running a 10-hour race this weekend. As usual, I'll be there as her crew, filling her water bottles, handing her food and bandaging blisters in short little bursts of time every hour. The rest of the time, I'll be left with just my phone as entertainment. Unfortunately for me, I don't game. Confessions of a Non-Gamer

I'm also not one to watch movies on a phone. After a few YouTube videos, I start to get restless. I'm a reader with attention span issues. I'm prepared to do without Internet, although hopefully I'll have connectivity. These will be my go to apps.

Pocket: Stay Informed - Pocket is where I save all the articles I want to read, but don't have time for. I also have a couple of RSS feeds that go straight to Pocket. I can add to it on my phone or my Mac. It's also integrated into Inoreader, my feed reader. You can download your saved articles for offline access.

Amazon Kindle - The cool thing about Kindle books is how little space they take up. I have hundreds of books saved on my phone.

NextDraft - I've been reading Dave Pell's daily links blog for over a decade. He suggests and comments on about a dozen stories a day and has a real knack for digging up fascinating content. He's as good at as anyone, even Kottke.

Medium: Read & Write Stories - Since its inception, I've read most Medium stories on Archive.ph. Then one of my cousins started a Medium blog and I got a subscription. It's been nice. Removing the friction and having the ability to subscribe to blogs has exposed me to a lot of good content.

Amerpie's Custom Tech Feed on Reddit - I will confess to being addicted to Reddit like no other place on the Internet. If you hang out in the wrong places there, it can be a real downer, but it also has some helpful and fun communities too. This is my collection of 37 tech related subreddits and where I hang out the most.

I don't think I'll die of boredom.

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The Gervais Street Bridge in Columbia. SC over the Congaree River

Secretariat winning the Belmont Stakes

As a sports obsessed kid, I committed statistics to memory without even trying. I'm normally not much of a numbers guy, math and I are mortal enemies, but I could remember Ty Cobb's lifetime batting average, .367, the number of home runs Babe Ruth hit in his career, 714 and the name of the only pitcher to win 500 games, Cy Young. I knew the number of lengths by which Secretariat won the Belmont Stakes, 50 and the name of the only horse ever to beat Man O' War in. race, Upset. I learned all these facts in the 70s and they've never left me.

On the other hand, the plans Wonder Woman makes and shares for our present day lives are not usually something I can recall a day or two later. I know we are going somewhere to do something on a certain date, but I'm never really quite sure, without asking several times, where it is we're heading and what the activity is we are going to do. Future date do not stick in my mind.

I was on the Quiz Bowl team in high school, where groups of students from all over the state competed to answer the kind of questions that make you good at Jeopardy. Most of my teammates were Beta Club and National Honor Society members while I was a very determined C student trying to graduate from high school without ever doing any homework. I did not have a good work ethic when it came to school. If a subject required memorizing and regurgitating material, I was golden, but when you had to puzzle out answers like you do in Algebra and Chemistry, well, I did not shine there.

The years of hard drinking I subjected myself were bad for my memory in two ways. I killed a lot of brain cells. My IQ is measurably lower post recovery than it was when I was tested as a teenager. That's the price I paid for the lifestyle I lived. I'm just gald to be sober. eTh other thing that living in addiction does is give you a great many things over which to feel guilty. Drunks and addicts make poor decisions. They get in trouble. They let people down. Repeatedly. Acknowledging that and putting it behind me took years and honestly, some of those memories will never cease to be painful.

My Dad married my step-mom when I was 17. She worked for years for Northrup Grumman where she was hired as an administrative assistant and left as an executive. She is the only person to ever master my fathers difficult personality. She has always handled his various quirks and oddities with great skill and all of us admire her for that. We can't do it like she does. She is 79 now and has advanced Alzheimer's disease. Dad is her caretaker and it isn't easy. Like a lot of people with her illness, she can become verbally abusive for no apparent reason. She requires a lot of patience and compassion. I cannot tell if she still knows who I am, but I tell her I love her and hug her when we meet. If she wants to talk to Dad while I'm visiting, I keep quiet. They have a home health assistant who comes over five days a week and when I asked my step-mom last weekend how she like her, she didn't know who I was talking about.

Seeing what Alzheimers does to her memory helps me not feel sorry for myself because I lost 5% or 10% off my edge. I get by just fine. I'm not as good at some things I as I'd like to be, but I'm not handicapped, just a bit humbled. Even though Wonder Woman wishes I was better at retaining information that really matters, she still professes to be amazed when pull random facts out of the air. Somebody has to remember all of Roosevelt's vice presidents. It might as well be me.

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I've enjoyed all types of science fiction since I was in junior high school, but the one type of sci-fi novel that has always been my favorite are time travel books. I think because I also enjoy historical fiction and have spent many an hour imagining myself back in the past, the notion of time travel is particularly appealing. For some reason, I have never had a desire to go to the future. Even before climate change started ruining that for everyone, I just wanted to see all the different historical eras about which I've read so much.

Here are a few of my favorite time travel books.

Blackout (All Clear, #1) by Connie Willis | Goodreads and All Clear: A Novel (Oxford Time Travel) by Connie Willis | Goodreads - two novels that take place in London during The Blitz, they give a convincing look at what life was like in the tube shelters as the residents of the city underwent Nazi bombardment. The evacuation of children to the countryside is also covered as is the Dunkirk evacuation. The time travelers are historians from Oxford University in 2060.

11/22/63 by Stephen King | Goodreads - I think Steven King is as entertaining as any writer who has ever lived. I'm not a literary critic, I just like a good page turner and this book certainly qualifies. It has the usual King touches of life in Maine and many, many unexpected twists. You can tell King did a lot of research for the book, so even if your more knowledgable than most about the Kennedy assassination, you won't be put off by incorrect details.

Outlander (Outlander, #1) by Diana Gabaldon | Goodreads - My daughter looked at me dubiously when I asked to borrow her copy of the first Outlander book. I didn't know that it was considered a romance novel. Even after finishing the book, I wasn't convinced that it wasn't for men too. There are plenty of details about the rebellious Scots and the dastardly British Army. I enjoyed it.

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North | Goodreads - Unlike most time travel books I enjoy, this one didn't take place in a historical era. It covers the same years of the 20th century, over and over and over again, as Harry August dies and is reborn with total recall of the lives he's led in the past. Calire North does a good job of keeping it interesting.

The Door Into Summer by Robert A. Heinlein | Goodreads- Some of the later works of Robert A Heinlein were problematic, a little too right wing and way too sexist for modern sensibilities, but his novels from the Golden Age of science fiction are delightfully imaginative. Heinlein has a fertile imagination and a deft touch with dialog. This is the story of a man who was tricked into going into suspended animation only to awaken to a world where time travel is possible. He goes back to deal with the people who tricked him.

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I am in the early stages of setting up a home network environment consisting of three Macs, a Windows 11 Thinkpad, an Ubuntu 24 Thinkpad, two iPads, an Android tablet and two iPhones. The quickest and easiest way to move files between all these devices has proven to be the free and open-source app, Local Send. As long as all of the devices are on the same wireless network and not logged into a VPN, all I have to do is make sure the app is running on each one to send files.

The settings on the Mac app are straightforward. You can send files, folders, text messages or whatever you have on your clipboard to other devices. The program assigns each device random names (e.g., Shiny Cherry), but you can call them whatever makes sense to you. For receiving files you can toggle between three settings: off, on for any connection and on for favorites, with favorites being other devices you've designated as being in that category.

You have control over the color and light/dark theme of Local Send. You can choose to close the window and have the program accessed from the menu bar. You can set several options for saving files: automatically save, require approval, require a PIN. You can also designate a single folder as the destination for received files and all incoming data will go there.

For security, you can whitelist and blacklist network interfaces. All of them are whitelisted by default. If you need to change the default port, you can do that as well as change the default discovery timeout. Encryption is on by default but it can be turned off. Local send does not require that your network be connected to the Internet. The program collects no data from you to send to the developer.